Parental Angst Versus
Child Welfare
I observed two news
stories from afar until I found myself commenting on a Facebook post, to which
the author suggested my comment should be an essay.
Previously, I had
written about my parents’ decision to send me to secondary boarding school
after the cloistered bubble of an international primary school education. I
will not dwell on that matter, but there are many facets to not being born and
raised within the traditions, culture, and lands of one’s parents’ birth.
Blog - Childhood:
When Parents Think They Know Best
For that, there was a
term coined: Third-Culture Kids. This comes with many connotations, including
the conflicts of environments, the anxiety and angst of our parents, the issues
of not finding belonging in any place, and all the attendant psychological
challenges that are somewhat ignored because our parents assume time will
eventually resolve things and make everything work.
Send Them Home to
Learn
What bothers ethnic
minority parents today is what might happen to their kids in the UK, where I am
somewhat more familiar with the situation, and in the Americas. The tendency
among parents who have the means is to extricate their kids from abroad and place
them in the sometimes-harsh environments of their home countries, usually in
West Africa, where they hope to address the lapses in discipline, educational
attainment, purpose, and character that they have observed in or around their
children.
Recently, a child
took his parents to court to compel them to return him to the UK after he was
apparently deceived into going to Ghana to see a sick relative. We all have
variations of the same plot. He lost his case, the judge empathising but
ultimately siding with the parents. [BBC News: Son Loses
Case Against Parents Over Move to Africa]
Continuing with the
narrative, some men have come forward to share their own stories about being
sent home and how, in hindsight, it saved them. It probably did save all of us,
one way or the other. However, it is never comfortable during that absence from
what the kids call home. [BBC News: I Was Duped
Into Leaving London for School in Ghana - But It Saved Me]
Before I share my
comment, many kids have been brought up in the UK and the US and have thrived;
this is great credit to their parents and communities that nurtured them. All
these stories need to be told.
My Facebook
Comment
I suppose this is
another aspect of split upbringing that is rarely discussed.
We returned to
Nigeria when I was hardly six years old; however, because I was with my
parents, I had the pleasure of attending primary schools filled with
foreign-looking but Nigerian-born schoolmates, while many of us black kids were
foreign-born.
It was the secondary
boarding experience that was brutal, but I survived, despite the lasting scars
of that environment.
You eventually become
streetwise without losing the kind of daring that some people regularly said we
Ajebotas [Kids who eat bread and butter rather than local fare; a pejorative
term for lacking experience in local customs.] have.
The longstanding
benefit of my early education and experiences in Nigeria meant building
resilience, grit, and, mostly, self-esteem, while retaining the precocity I
always had.
Upon my return to the
UK, my blackness was always a part of me; no one could racially abuse me and
get the upper hand, as I had a better retort, coupled with wit.
Escaping the race and
deprivation politics of the inner cities and suburbs, which would have found me
in Walsall and Birmingham in the 1970s and well into the 1980s, meant I never
had the sometimes-invisible baggage or chip-on-the-shoulder that affected ethnic
minority kids who never left.
I left Nigeria with
just an OND and built an IT career that was earning top rates by the mid-1990s,
before the extraordinary fortune of being invited to pursue a master’s degree
after providing a character reference for a friend.
Moreover, unlike the
scolding in Nigeria that implied one wouldn’t amount to anything and spurred
you on, in England at that time, it was a limit on your horizons, pushing you
towards low achievement and menial roles.
My parents left after
qualifying in their respective professions; even though my dad placed third
overall in his accountancy finals, his colleagues suggested that they never
thought he was that bright, instead of congratulating him on his success.
I assume they both
decided that the England of Enoch Powell, whom my father once challenged in a
pub, was not a suitable place for them or for their boy—and the children that
came after me.
Now, each experience
is different; I cannot suggest that any of these actions are in the best
interests of any child, but having the agency to intervene when you see things
going awry is a privilege of opportunity that many do not have.
I even had my own
personal intervention; after a relationship breakup in 1999 left me lost and
listless, I packed my bags and started anew in the Netherlands, where I
remained for almost 13 years.
Our parents mean
well; whether they were right is another conversation altogether.
I cannot argue
against being immersed in a totally different culture; it presents
opportunities that we often fail to fully appreciate until later in life, as
the men have suggested in the article.
