By Kate Getao
“She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want–a husband, a house and a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic,
grief, and confusion…” So begins the blurb for the
bestselling book turned movie: Eat, Pray, Love. But for a small edit, the title of the book could easily be describing the standard Kenyan parenting formula.
When we stagger into the house at 11pm, to find a bleary-eyed house help watching a Nollywood drama, we have just three questions which are designed to establish the state of our offspring: “Have they eaten? Have they done their homework? Have they
slept?” The health and happiness of our children has a simple formula: Eat, study, sleep. If our kids fail to achieve any of these ingredients of success, then we are overcome by the same feelings of panic, grief and confusion that inspired Elizabeth Gilbert, the
ambitious American woman to seek dietary, religious and romantic relief in Asia.
The feeding part of this formula seems to fall naturally into three categories: fill up, take away or give in. I recently experienced an example of a fill-up feeder. I was on a plane bound for a neighboring country, seated next to a mother with a large and
particularly ‘long’ child. You have to admire the height of a child when his head is jammed against a plane window and his feet are digging into your stomach. “You have a very healthy child,” I said to the proud mother, “how old is he?” “10 months,” replied
Mum, with a triumphant smile. I was flabbergasted, since I would have estimated more than triple that figure. However, Mum soon climbed over me and retrieved a bulging bag from the overhead locker. The bag was full of dozens of containers filled with all
kinds of puréed foods. She proceeded to stuff more nutrients into the giant using a colourful spoon. At the end of the flight, Mum, the flight attendant and I formed a sort of baby-motorcade in order to cart the large child and all his paraphernalia off the plane.
Clearly he had achieved the eating requirement. Other mothers forget the blender and just order in, while some give in and rarely insist on any form of consumption.
Once a child has been fed, then it is time to establish her future by making sure that she does her homework. Most parents are not available to help with the homework. Luckily there are a few alternatives. Some parents trust that what has been learned at school
that day is sufficient to guide the homework. Some parents invest in a tuition centre with a Japanese title. A lot of parents just trust in the mighty Internet and three trusty functions called copy, paste and share. Nowadays the old “dog ate my homework”
excuses don’t work. (And according to jokes4us.com the dog said to his classmate, “Please let me copy your homework. I ate mine!”) The modern homework evader says things such as “a virus infected my homework and so the antivirus deleted the file!”
A child who has successfully done her homework only needs a good night’s sleep in order to be complete. Unfortunately, there are dozens of temptations in the modern world that result in half the children being seriously sleep-deprived. First there was
television, then there were video games, then there was the Internet which is kind of like a combination of the two. It used to be enough to just force your youngster into her room where boredom would soon lull her into dreamland. However, locking a child
in a modern bedroom is about as effective as locking a pussycat in a dairy. So someone who answers “Yes!” to the question “Are you asleep?” Is probably just theorising!
And where does prayer fit into this eat-study-sleep cycle? Prayer is reserved for those all-important examination times, when nutrients, study and slumber may not quite be enough to catapult you onto the celebratory shoulders of your schoolmates.
Add a spoonful of love to the eat-study-sleep recipe this Saturday.
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