"Bad Parent"

In today's world, the place of what people term 'proper parenting' can not be overemphasized, but what exactly is proper parenting? The other day, I was walking along the kerb by the side of the road, and there was this woman carrying a baby on her back with two other kids walking ahead of her. Note that this was a busy road and the children were been children; carefree and amazed at everything they see. I couldn't help but wonder what she's thinking letting those kids stay ahead of her on a busy walkway beside a very busy road. Anything could really go wrong and before she will catch up with the children, the harm would have been done already.

There was also this video of a man who was taking the kids to school. He held a rope and the kids held the same rope, and he was leafing them. At a point the kids left the rope and wandered into a mall and he kept going as he was pressing a phone, he didn't even know they had wondered away. There's this woman too, who tied a child to a pole, just so he doesn't disturb her. A mother takes her child who has been disciplined for doing something wrong, and go give him a treat. Majority of people will class these people as "bad parents", but first of all, what is bad parenting? I'm going to be taking a very controversial stand on this matter.

Through all the developmental stages of life we encounter from birth to death, we are never really prepared for it. From childhood to the rebellious teenage years when we begin to feel we Begin to feel we can conquer the world, we are hardly ever prepared for that transition. Of course, for some of us, our parents were there to try and guide us, but there's only so much guidance they can do. No matter how they try, we are never fully prepared for it. Same thing goes for the transition between our teenage years to our young adult days and then our adult stage. We are rarely ever ready for it.

Knowing this, it becomes clear that every parent(s) you see out there is rarely completely prepared for that stage of life. They all prepare as best as they can of course, but that's it.

Humans are the most difficult things, living it non living to manage and kids are no less guilty of this. In a world where there's so many responsibilities and expectations on how one ought to do anything, it's hard to keep up. Seeing that humans are difficult to manage and there's no handbook left by the previous generation to the next on how to parent right, it's really quite unfair how we judge parents and classify them as good and bad.

Like I said before, there's no handbook on how to be a perfect parent. They are all just trying their best in their own way, as much as they know. So, before you start judging and classifying the mother whose child is seemingly walking ahead of her, you should maybe consider that she's maybe overwhelmed, before you judge the mother whose child is tied to a pole, consider how mentally stressed she must be and the fact that she has to get things done on top of all that, before you labelled the loving mother who give an erring child a treat, consider that maybe that's the best way she knows of dealing with such.

Of course, there are things that are wring and right in themselves, I'm not disputing that. I'm just saying before you go on to judge and classify a person's parenting skill, remember there's no handbook for it, like there isn't for most things and he/she is probably doing the best she knows.

Closing Thoughts

Parenting like a lot of other human stuff is personal. There's no ultimately right or wrong way to do it, neither is there any ultimately good or bad parents. Every parent out there is just doing the best they think they can do, and they will definitely get some things right and some other things wrong, but that's life. Let's all be less judgemental of parents. Parenting is no easy task.

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