Dear Agatha,
My daughter is 17, pretty and well behaved. So I thought until I began to notice her receiving strange phone calls. Initially I ignored these calls, thinking they were from female friends until I chanced on her declaring her undying love for the person on the other end of the phone.
I was livid with anger so I grabbed her phone, dialed the last number that called to warn the boy or man to stay off her. I threatened to have him arrested if he comes near her again.
My daughter who has just written the Joint Admission and Matriculation Examination had the effrontery of accusing me of being unfair to her. This is new because never has she spoken back to me. I suspect this boy may be responsible. So I’m thinking of having him locked up to drive home my point that he is a negative influence on my daughter.
I desperately need your advice because I don’t want her to make any mistake in life. Her attitude is giving me concern. As far as I am concerned she is still too young to know anything about men and women.
Please help me.
Roseline.
Dear Roseline,
Be careful else you would lose the love and respect of your daughter. Yes, at 17, she may still be a baby but the changes in her body have made her a young woman, one crying to be given freedom, to be understood and the right to be heard. She is only a year away from Nigeria’s official age of consent. In the developed countries of the world, she is a year above the age.
To continue to be her mother and best friend, you must listen to her, discuss with her and dialogue your options if you don’t want to lose her to friends or people who should not have a say in her life.
The ages of 16 to 18 years are the most troublesome for both the children and parents. These are when the hormonal changes are their most potent and very obvious. This is when the child transforms from the age of complete innocence to the age of awareness. That a child isn’t sexually active to know doesn’t deny the child of the knowledge of the changes going on inside his or her body.
These changes give them the same feelings, urges, desires and awareness the more matured adults have. Theirs, being completely novel come with all the excitements and promises of new beginnings. You must understand from your own experiences at their age that these feelings cannot be caged neither can the children whose bodies are being ravaged by the hormones control the effects of these natural but necessary invaders.
The hormones prepare them for the only assignment natural to man and woman, procreation. It is primeval, something no amount of scolding, imprisonment, threats, beating, denials can change. From the day we were born, it has been wired into our subconscious. Our main purpose on mother earth is to have sex and children. This is an indisputable fact. Every other thing we do in between like getting education, acquiring extra knowledge to develop and improve our environments is in between assignments. That is why sex remains the most consistent topic through the ages right from the Garden of Eden. It is the only thing that has resisted change just like the sun, moon and star.
And this is why our responsibilities as parents must be pegged on love and understanding to ensure that our children have the confidence to face the changes going on both inside and outside them.
The first thing is for you to accept that there is nothing you can do about those feelings going on inside of her or prevent her from falling in love. It is a natural process, and Mother Nature is preparing her body for the ultimate assignment of a woman in life.
Your duty as her mother is not to oppose Mother Nature but to help her minimise the negative side of the process. I totally agree with you that she needs monitoring but not the excessive force you are considering. Locking that man up would only make your daughter more determined to follow her heart. The stubbornness and resilience of the teenager, especially the female, is legendary. If she thinks you are too strict, she might decide to do that thing all females do to tell their parents they are of age. She may decide to get pregnant simply to show you that she is her own person. When that happens, you stand compromised. At least until she finds her feet again, you will bear the most shame of her act of rebellion.
Technological advancement has made motherhood these days to be the most difficult assignment on earth. While our mothers and their own mothers got away with attitude like yours, it would be difficult for you to because all the information today’s teenagers need about their sexuality is at their finger tips. Mothers before us managed well because so many things in those days were shrouded in secrecy.
Contemporary technology has made our children more advanced than their physical ages. They have so much information more than you and I could possibly have when we were their ages. So don’t deceive yourself into thinking that this man is a negative influence over your daughter or responsible for her actions. Such information she can get at the press of a button in or outside your home.
Rather than fight her, deploy dialogue. One of the worst things that can happen to a female child is to get pregnant before her time. Not only does it derail the child, it equally calls to question the moral values of her mother. More often than not the mistake actually comes from the attitude of the mothers who forget that those heady years need wisdom and not threat to navigate safely.
The first step is to realise that she is no more a child but a young woman. Learn to listen to her voice and pleas just as you want to be listened to by her. We are given our experiences in life to help others succeed where we have failed and provide it when necessary to teach life’s important lessons. If you recall your own growing years and how much you despised your mother for being too hard, for not understanding you, you would know how to handle this delicate stage of your daughter’s life.
All you have to do to make this task easy is for you to go back in time a little bit. It would help you put things in their proper perspectives, it would give you wonderful clues to make this period enjoyable for both of you.
Destroying the phone or seizing it would not solve the problem, like I earlier said, would only complicate the situation between the two of you.
Whatever your own mistakes and high moments were as a teenager, learn to share them with her. Doing so would help her to understand you as a person, bring about a bond between the two of you. It would, more than anything else, help you two talk about the disparity between your worlds. The talk would help refresh your memories on the changes going on inside of her. It would also remove whatever suspicions she has of you. By discussing the subject of your past with her, you invite her to be your friend and for you to be her confidant.
As her friend, the gains are tremendous in that it helps both of you know your limits as well as your liberties.
In discussing your own teenage years, don’t leave out the mistakes of your own past, the wrong decisions you took which are still affecting you till date and how your mother tried to prevent the mistakes from happening. These are subtle ways of reminding her of the vulnerability of her own current situation and how disappointed her decision could turn out to be if she isn’t careful.
Tell her that you are not against her falling in love but would appreciate if she allows you to be part of the process by bringing the man home to meet you. This may worry her a bit but assure her of your good intentions as well as promise not to do anything that would compromise her image.
Meeting the boy would help you access him and monitor the development between the two of them. The fear of what you would do to him should he do anything to hurt or compromise your daughter would put some fears into him to behave. There is some security for her too if the boy is known to you.
Demanding to see him would produce two results, terminate the relationship if the intention of the boy is simply to sleep with her or change his intentions for good. The forbidden and secret fruits are usually the sweetest. Legitimacy gives a measure of sanity to an act formerly thought forbidden. Insisting on meeting and discussing with the man involved would kill some of the excitements in the relationship because at the end of the day, you would have succeeded in making it appear as non-issue, even though it is, deep down.
This doesn’t mean you would stop praying or showing interest in what she does. It only means changing your line of discipline through enlisting her help and involving her in the control of her affairs.
It is called joint responsibility. It takes a whole load from you while conferring on her certain level of responsibility. The fear of not disappointing you is enough to make any young and thoughtful girl stay out of trouble until she is ready for the responsibility of sleeping with a man.
Meet her halfway. It won’t hurt you to let her see your fears, know why you are having those fears and how disappointed you would be if she fails to make it in life. Facts of life is not an abstract lesson but one every adult has walked through before. This is not the time for you to play the superhuman mother. You lack the strength of your own to paddle her across this ocean of life without her help and the help of God. She is also very confused but just don’t know how to ask for your help. Being the more matured one, show her you care by holding out your helping hand to her. That stubbornness is a camouflage for a cry for help. Don’t drive her away by being so uncompromising. It won’t help either of you.
Remember life is in seasons. This is her season, help her make the best of it so that when she moves from this stage, she would always have you to thank for being such a supportive and understanding mother.
Good luck
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