In this part of the world, there’s nothing like privacy for kids, especially in this advanced era where modernization and civilization has changed everything both for the better and for worse. Honestly, i just couldn’t help but give a broad smile at the first sighting of this topic, and that’s because i find it very funny for a couple of reasons. African parents and privacy are two words that can never work together, not now and never will it work in the future…
This topic actually reminds me of what my mum said to me a couple of years ago when i was teasing her about kids privacy. I remember every aspect of this conversation like it happened yesterday because of the kind of reaction i got when i mentioned it that year. A Couple of years ago I was still a kid. You know, i was still living under my parents roof, eating their food, asking for allowance and mostly dependent on them for almost everything…
It was on a Sunday evening, i was sitting down in the parlor with my siblings and mum, i was on my itel P32 chatting with my friends on facebook, my siblings and mum were watching channel 25 on GOTV that very day, incase you don’t know, channel 25 on gotv happens to be the Zee world channel, they were watching King of hearts to be precise that very hour. I was on my phone chatting with one of my female friends before she suddenly went off. She was online on messenger but didn’t respond to me, after waiting for her for some minutes and didn’t see her respond to my messages, I decided to call her via messenger call…
I called her and she picked up immediately. Honestly I wasn’t expecting her to pick up that day but then seeing how she picked up the call immediately made me scared and also happy at the same time, so i just decided to keep the call going, we continued from where we left off. I was 17 then i think. We kept on talking about how her weekend went, the conversation was going smoothly, which made me kinda forget i was in the parlor with my mum of all people. I was completely lost, smiling from ears to mouth, not knowing my mum has been observing me for some time. Just before i knew it, i heard her shout “Weldone oh, at your age, is that what you should be doing, bring your phone here let me see who you are talking to”….
I immediately composed myself after i heard that and dropped the call immediately, before she comes for me. The light went out some minutes after I ended the call, so we all decided to go out for some fresh air. She brought up the conversation again, but this time it was because I wasn’t responding to her again, which made her try to collect my phone to see who i was chatting with. I was quite fast, so before she stretch her hand i ran far away from her and jokingly said to her “why do you want to invade my privacy?”. She then said to me “as long as you are under my roof, there’s no privacy for you”. It was at this point I knew what i was really into…
In summary, my point is that as long as you are under your parents roof in this country, and your parents happen to be African, there will never be anything like privacy for you as a kid, even as adults you still won’t get your hundred percent privacy if you are still living under their roof, which brings us to this next question…
DO KIDS NEED PRIVACY?
Honestly, kids don’t need privacy. I’m talking about children between the age bracket of 0 to 17. Children within these age bracket don’t need anything like privacy, and that’s because they are still young and quite incapable, all their activities still need to be monitored my their parents until they are old enough…
The best time to allocate privacy to them is once they are a little bit over 18 years of age, and that too not completely, because children of this era are very unpredictable. Children of this generation need thorough monitoring, especially when it comes to this aspect of privacy…
Parents will always be parents, children will always be children. There will never be anything like complete privacy for Nigerian children. You just need to know what to do, how to do it and when to do it to get your parents off your back…
In conclusion, honestly, i don’t know how to balance this but i believe with the right communication everything will be awesome, but then don’t expect anything like complete privacy from Nigerian parents 😂…
THANKS FOR READING…