This generation has worsened to the point where fear has faded away. Kids today are lacking respect for their parents. Imagine a mother calling her child, and the child keeps her waiting, replying with, “Mom, I’m coming”—until the mother herself has to walk over and ask what she wants to ask. I think the world is becoming more poisoned day by day.
Children not respecting or fearing their parents is one of the major issues affecting our society. If a parent can’t control or give orders to their own child, how can that same child listen to anyone else?
Let me tell you a quick story.
I was a very difficult child with a hardened attitude. We lived in a “face-me-I-face-you” apartment where my father rented two rooms connected to each other. He was very strict, a man of rules and principles.
I vividly remember a football match in 2006 that was the talk of the town—Arsenal vs. Barcelona. That was the first time I really got to know about football. The whole neighborhood was buzzing about the match the day before and on the day itself. It felt like people were advertising a match they wouldn’t even be attending at the stadium—just watching from football viewing centers or their small 13-inch humpback TVs. Life seemed good back then, though not for me personally. Sometimes, I honestly wished I could just stumble and die, or that one of the poisonous substances I took would work—but they felt like nothing more than water going down my throat.
On that day, I was walking to school with my friend—he was smart and knowledgeable. I, with my big head and dull brain (which annoyed my dad a lot), was always being compared. My dad would say in his deep voice, “Ori e tobi, a mo ko si kan kan ni be,” meaning “Your head is big, but there’s nothing inside.”
That morning, we were arguing about football. My friend was a Thierry Henry fan. I didn’t know much about football but pretended I did. I claimed I supported Barcelona just to keep up the conversation. Our siblings were walking with us, listening quietly. My younger sister always walked slowly, and that made us late to school often. But our teachers never believed it was her fault. I was the one who always got punished.
My dad never believed her slowness was the reason either. Every time he saw us on the road after leaving the house, he’d slap the back of my neck and say, “You’re still not in school?” When I changed schools in JSS1 and no longer had to wait for my siblings, I was never late again until I left that school in my second year.
I would love to explain why I left my first school in my second term, but I’ll save that story for another day. That wasn’t even my first school. I didn’t leave it because I was stubborn. The second one, though, I left because of an act of “activism,” not just my own stubbornness. We’ll come back to that later.
Let me go back to how strict parents used to be and how respect was common in our childhood—despite me being a terrible child.
Everyone in our compound was watching the Arsenal vs. Barcelona match in our neighbor’s sitting room that night. There was a barbershop at the front of the house, and the barber had left his generator on, causing a lot of smoke and noise. I was supposed to fetch water that evening (probably skipped it earlier), so I had to do it that night.
I walked into the barbershop and saw the other kids playing with the clippers. We were turning it on and off, just being kids. Being the most stubborn of the group, I pressed the clipper to the front of my hair—and it cut some of it. That was crazy. I knew right away I had ruined not just the night but the whole week for myself.
I had to hide it from my dad. I kept wearing a cap to cover it. But unfortunately, he found out. And with him, there were no jokes when it came to me. He told me, “I don’t care how you do it, but I must not see that hair on your head by tomorrow.”
I was only 10 years old—where would I get money to go to the barbershop? I used part of my lunch money to buy a blade and tried to shave my head myself, but I made it worse. So I ran to my friend’s mother’s shop. She was our neighbor, and I don’t think she ever paid a barber to cut her children’s hair—she did it herself. I begged her to help me shave it all off.
Later that night, my dad returned from the mosque. As I was about to leave the sitting room and walk into the passage, we met at the door. I stepped back to let him pass. As I took one step out, I heard a loud “GBA!”—a heavy slap to my head. He didn’t even bother to check if I had shaved the hair. He didn’t believe I could do it. I screamed from the pain. But when he touched my head and felt no hair, then checked it, he saw I had shaved it all off.
That’s what we used to call fear of parents—something that’s missing in society today. Social media has reshaped Gen Z’s mindset completely. I believe it’s time we start correcting them with the cane again to bring back the African values. In African culture, we respect our parents and elders.
