To do that, I'd love to repropose an event that happened years ago which I have often referenced in my posts.
In 2007, a girl arrived from Nigeria. In that same 2007, she saw a second girl for the first time. After that first non relatable and distant encounter, the first girl gathered the second girl's friends and asked them to stay away from her because she had deduced that the girl was a slut from her looks.
The first girl was 18, while the second girl was 14.
One will look at this scenario and brush it off as something minor. "Na small pikin dey worry am". Because in Nigeria, we don't pay much attention to the emotional components of people, as we are too busy thinking of our physical needs. Our comfort comes before our minds, so most times we do not pick up toxic behaviours at their early stage, leaving them to eventually morphe into full blown personality disorders.
If we consider that we can start identifying children's character and personality from as early as the age of 7, it means that at 18, that girl has had 11 years to consolidate that behaviour. A behaviour that shouldn't have been overlooked.
First of all, this was a group of friends who had known each other since they were kids. They met and spoke regularly. Even though they were just "kids", they knew each other to some extent. Then a disruptive element came into their midst, picked out one of them and encouraged the rest to ostracize her and emotionally abuse her.
Because it doesn't end with their not talking to her because she's a slut. It's also about their telling people, friends, acquaintances, social groups that they no longer speak to her or interact with her because she's a slut.
This 18 year old girl had deliberate plans to cause that much emotional damage to a 15 year old girl due to her own warped sense of morality.
The 18 year old girl was a church freak. She sang in the choir, dressed shabby and wore this garment of superior morality, as people commonly do in Nigeria - the country she had lived for 18 years.
The 14 year old girl didn't. She went to church when she could. She sat among the congregation. She dressed like a teenager in Italy would dress - shirts, vests, trousers, jeans, dresses - and she never felt the need to act as if she was better than anybody else. She was not different from any other kid of her age.
One the one hand, we had this group of teenagers who lived in a controlled environment. If their parents weren't keeping them in check, their neighbours, church members, relatives, pastors and even strangers of the same nationality were doing so. They hadn't yet formed the ability to discern evil. They lived in a very small world.
On the other hand, there was this 18 year old girl who had seen more than the average girl and boy of her age who lived in Italy hadn't. She could tell what evil was as she had explored and experienced the harsh Nigerian reality. Behind the facade of a church girl, lay this viciously wicked and manipulative person.
Her father had died when she was little and her mother was the third wife. After her father's death, her mother was left to cater to 4 children on her own. At the age 15-16 she started wilding out and began her series of abusive and exploitative relationships with men. When she arrived in Italy, she was far from the naive, God fearing and well meaning person she had wanted to portray. It wouldn't take long before this image of "perfection" started to crack, until it shattered completely.
Violence, assault, betrayal, theft, fraud, near fatal self harm, are just a few of the actions she'd commit over the years, after that first episode of personal and social disruption.
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When I say that we need to do better at being parents, I mean it. Because it's either your children will end up being like that 18 year old girl, become her enablers, or worse, become her victims.
By raising your child to be a good and empathetic person, you are not just doing a good job as a parent, you are also safeguarding every other child that will interact with them outside the house. You are protecting people from the future pain they would cause otherwise.
Once your child is old enough to effectively harm people and they do not harm people, then you can say that you have done a good job as a parent. But if your child is the cause of pain to most people who come in contact with them, then you need to look into yourself and the way you have raised them.
There is no hope for people like that girl. She is set on that path and will tread it for as long as she lives. She will always be disruptive no matter where she goes.
But you have the chance to avoid making that same mistake now. You have the chance to love your children and be attentive to their emotional needs.
If we raise our kids to be empathetic, we won't have to live in a world where we fight for equality.
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