Opinion: Don’t grow children, raise them

By Ssekisambu Isaac.

Kampala, Uganda (RTN)- What is the difference between growing children and raising them?  This may sound like not a serious question but it has a lot of wisdom to it. There is a great difference between growing children and raising them in today’s world. 

It’s undoubted that most parents in the world of the 21^st century are just growing or ensuring the growth of their children but are not raising them. In the name of work, parents have abandoned their children to either, their fellow children, maids or television and smart gadgets. 

All they (parents) do is ensure that they give them (children) whatever they ask for or want in terms of material things, buy food, pay their medical bills and send them off to school. Worst of all some parents send their children to boarding so as they (parents) have no disturbances as they carry on with their treasured work. 

This is what keeps on happening from childhood to adulthood. Children are simply grown and sent out into the world with very little or no knowledge of what they should do since parents are never available. No wonder, a lot has changed in this generation and manners have been traded for other things.

On the other hand, raising children is the opposite of growing them. This happens at a very slim percentage in the world today.

 It revolves around commitment which is absent in most parents…is it because they were also not raised? This brings as to the conclusion that one give what one has got unless one is selfish. Back to raising children, it involves giving children time, spending time talking to them, hearing them out, watching what they watch, and being their biggest follower and fun so that you keep in the know of what they are up to.

Lastly but not least, its important that parents put their children number one in all they do and offer them as much time as “all the time” in order to secure a good future for them through daily parental guidance. This way we can all be sure of a generation raised for the transformation of this country.