Are you scripting or coaching your youngsters to be emotionally steady and profitable overseas? That was the million-dollar query Mr Reward Fowowe, an internationally acclaimed Household Methods Coach, requested mother and father at a current parenting webinar organised by SparkXplorer, an afterschool studying platform, for Spark Students’ mother and father.
In the event you aspire to japa someday or maybe you’re single now however have plans to offer your youngsters a World North citizenship by birthing them within the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, France, and so forth. while you ultimately begins to boost a household, otherwise you plan to ship your youngsters overseas for high quality schooling then you could wish to learn this text. We are able to even flip the query. Are you scripting or coaching your youngsters to be emotionally steady and profitable right here in Nigeria?
Why is that vital?
The world has change into international and success interprets to management, respect, and legacy. Societies and areas right now are jostling to steer the world. Nigeria and Africa can’t afford to lag behind within the race, combating for crumbs, therefore the necessity to place their subsequent technology for achievement.
The rat race and absentee parenting
Emotion and success are intertwined and Fowowe’s query has change into important as a result of many youngsters right now are emotionally broken, significantly within the Western world, the place there’s a liberal angle to marriage, household, and parenting. Many African immigrant properties overseas are caught up within the rat race of survival, with each mother and father in lots of such properties operating a number of jobs like a DJ on a Serato Pioneer console, and little or no time for precise parenting. Such slack parenting can be on the rise in Nigeria. Thus, there’s an alarming enhance in emotionally challenged youth who endure absentee mother and father and switch to whomever or wherever they’ll entry to seek out solutions to life’s questions.
Disturbing youth suicide price as a consequence of emotional turmoil
Knowledge has proven that psychological well being points are a mounting concern in youngsters and younger adults. A 2023 information from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention confirmed that suicide is the second main explanation for dying amongst 10 to 34-year-olds within the US. Of this quantity, 19.6% are black or African American. A Yale Faculty of Drugs publication final yr revealed that “suicide is rising dramatically in preteens as younger as 8 years outdated as properly.” And the publication revealed that the “pattern is much more alarming concerning Black youngsters and teenagers,”… the place the “suicide price amongst Black youth ages 10-17 elevated by 144% between 2007 and 2020.”
It’s a comparable image the world over. As an example, within the UK, information gleaned from the Workplace of Nationwide Statistics confirmed that “suicide charges amongst younger individuals aged 15-19 in England rose by 35 per cent from 2020 to 2021.” In accordance with the Australian Institute of Well being and Welfare (AIHW), “Suicide is the main explanation for dying amongst Australians aged 15–24 years.” AIHW additionally revealed that the intentional self-harm hospitalisation determine is on the rise in that nation. The UK and Australian information embrace youngsters of immigrants. Knowledge by the World Well being Organisation confirmed that “suicide is the third main explanation for dying amongst 15 to 29-year-olds.” Bear in mind 19-year-old Religion Opesusi (see my article in Businessday of 25 Might 2025), who dedicated suicide two months in the past as a result of she believed she failed the JAMB examination. That’s typical of emotional imbalance.
So, actually, elevating emotionally steady youngsters is right now a high precedence for any mother or father. Emotional imbalance typically results in failure or unfulfilled potential, therefore the necessity to script or prepare youngsters to grasp their feelings and unleash their potential.
Life is scripted in any other case confusion will reign
Nothing in life occurs by likelihood. Each side of life, failure or success, is scripted by people, societies, or a divine energy. Our creator put techniques, constructions, and ideas in place to make sure orderliness. Malcolm X famously stated, “Training is the passport to the long run, for tomorrow belongs to those that put together for it right now.” Isaac Newton’s Legislation of Inertia says an object at relaxation stays so till an exterior drive strikes it. What Newton and Malcolm X have proven is that one needs to be deliberate to achieve a desired consequence. As a mother or father, if you need your baby to be nice, it’s important to plant and nurture the greatness within the baby. You can’t will it to occur.
Fowowe inspired African mother and father in diaspora to make sure they nudge their youngsters to the greatness they deserve by way of the constructing of an efficient household system. He talked about a guide he learn the place it was projected that by 2060, all the American workforce will likely be constructed on immigrants, however that White People will nonetheless maintain the political energy, deciding who does or will get what. In accordance with the household coach, if parenting is intentional sufficient, African immigrant mother and father can script/place their youngsters to be among the many legislation givers slightly than being the legislation takers in that future time. Who says loads extra Obamas, Kamala Harris, Kemi Badenoch, or Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala can’t be produced? Or in enterprise, they’ll prepare their youngsters to steer the world in enterprise and enterprise, very similar to Elon Musk.
An id disaster
The household coach stated the best disaster confronted right now by African immigrant youngsters, significantly within the US, which will inhibit scripting is an id disaster. These youngsters have no idea who they’re; they’re torn between two cultures: the African tradition of their mother and father, which they hardly know nor perceive, but are anticipated by the mother and father to respect, and the western tradition they grew as much as know, which the African mother and father think about too permissive and check out to withstand of their youngsters.
The necessity to course right by immigrant mother and father
The primary is to reassess the foundations of constructing an efficient household system. Fowowe stated the outdated African rule depends on feelings, a spur-of-the-moment factor. In Africa, mother and father are the be-all, know-all beings who brook no dissent. They might typically give directions to the kids with out enough backgrounding, corresponding to the explanation for the instruction and the supposed consequence, and count on the kids to conform. The African baby within the Western world is uncovered to totally different realities and conditions at a younger age and has entry to totally different varieties of knowledge on the contact of a button. So, it’s now not sufficient to easily shove directions at them and count on compliance or try and shout them down. They wish to know the why and the end result. That helps them acquire a greater understanding, resulting in internalisation and simple compliance.
Thus, a Nigerian mother or father within the US, for example, should undertake the intentional scripting powered by techniques and intelligence to construct a collaborative household system and lift emotionally steady and profitable youngsters. It’s this method and the atmosphere the mother and father have created within the residence that can start the kids’s total stability and attainment in life.
Adoption of the 4 battle traces
Id
The second motion is to attract up 4 important battle traces. Fowowe listed these traces as Id, Historical past, Village, and Mission. The kids have to be totally schooled of their heritage and tradition as Africans. They have to be made conscious of the African lifestyle, the values, together with integrity, empathy, arduous work, communality, respect, diligence, filial attachment and love, important considering, peaceable co-existence, and so forth. As a lot as attainable, the African immigrant mother and father should expose their youngsters to their mom tongue, delicacies, trend, and mores. This offers the kids a grounding, an outlined id that they’ll put on with delight.
Historical past
Historical past is to teach the kids on Africa’s proud heritage, like Africa having the oldest repeatedly working degree-granting college on this planet, in Morocco, the College of al-Qarawiyyin, which was established in 859AD. That Africa pioneered fundamental arithmetic about 25,000 years in the past, or that historical Benin Metropolis constructed an awesome wall of circa 10,000 miles that’s corresponding to China’s Nice Wall, or that Ile-Ife in present-day Osun State had paved roads in 1000 AD. If we fail to inform these tales of greatness and momentous accomplishments to our kids then we danger others rewriting our tales and supplanting them to suit their agenda – that’s already occurring, anyway. We danger being outlined by the dangerous behaviour of some Africans and that’s what our kids will choose us by.
Village
Village speaks to the communality of the African society, the place we’re our brothers’ – and sisters’ – keepers, the place we take delight in constructing one another up slightly than in search of to tear down, the place we glance out for one another’s wellbeing. Our youngsters must know this and likewise see it by way of common social engagements and interactions amongst Africans wherever we’re in diaspora.
Mission
Mission addresses the query of why we select to dwell exterior of Africa and what success will seem like for Africans in international lands. Is it simply to flee the poverty on the continent? Success ought to transcend dwelling comfy lives with our households. It ought to embody an affect on the homeland, a lot the identical manner as diaspora Jews, Chinese language, and Indians helped to construct their nations. It ought to embrace the positioning of Africa as a pacesetter in world affairs. These are the conversations that can excite the present technology and provides them a clearer sense of objective.
As Fowowe prompt, Nigerian and African mother and father in diaspora should undertake a private heritage audit to know their heritage and educate it to their youngsters, create a household system roadmap matrix, in addition to analysis, embrace, and replicate a household system template that works.
African immigrants should reassess their priorities, ditch outdated household techniques, and construct a brand new one that’s optimised for elevating emotionally steady youngsters as a pivot to attaining greatness, and within the course of spotlight Africa’s greatness and place the continent to steer the world.
