With a heavy heart, I watched a video making rounds – the SS3 students, young minds who just concluded their WAEC exams, engaging in shameful and immoral displays in the name of celebration. What should have been a moment of reflection has been turned into a festival of indecency and mockery of values.
This is not the generation our forefathers prayed for.
We are raising a generation that seems to have lost its way—where vulgarity is called expression, and shame is dismissed as old-fashioned. These are not just “children having fun.” These are warning signs of a decaying moral foundation.
To every parent out there: do not assume your child knows better. Do not assume they are safe just because you provide, clothe, and send them to school. School can never ever do everything. The school can never be successful with any child if family foundation and culture are not already built in him. School’s responsibility is extensive not primary. Family is primary. Therefore, strive to cultivate moral principles at home from ages 1 to 12, then the school will build from there and success is sure. Be close to your children. Talk to them. Know their friends. Know their struggles. Monitor their online habits. Most importantly—pray for them, and pray with them.
The truth is painful: many parents are present in the home but absent in the lives of their children.
We must return to the way of our grandparents—a way built on discipline, respect, fear of God, and community accountability. They didn’t need the internet to teach values. They taught it at dawn prayers, at family meals, with the rod of correction wrapped in deep love and concern.
“Spare the rod and spoil the child.” This is not just a saying—it’s a divine imperative as well as principle. A generation not corrected will surely correct itself in the street, behind bars, or on a viral video for the world to scorn.
Stop building a block of fake protection around your children, thereby creating a fake paradaisal world of no pain, no suffering, no sacrifice. Training is painful to the flesh. Human formation entails sacrifice. The earlier they started learning this the better. Our forefathers taught and lived that way.
Dear parent, wake up. You are not just raising a child. You are shaping a future husband, a future wife, a future leader. Don’t leave that to chance. The enemy is not sleeping—why should you?
Do not stiffle the importance of the school by joining your children to fight the school even when they make mistakes. Rather join the school to pressure the child to do good. It is always for good. Be supportive to the schools while they strive to inculcate discipline. The idea of soft pedals on the kids has not been very successful, the idea of undiluted discipline is. To follow God is to be moral and steadfast with positivity and values. If we miss it before age 12, we have almost missed it forever.
We must return to God. We must return to prayer. We must return to values, a return to character moulding. It takes time, it needs time. It is cumbersome, it is not an easy job as many modern day parents think. It is painstaking. May God have mercy on this generation. May He open our eyes before it is too late.
*Let this video not just make us shake our heads. Let it shake us back to responsibility.*
*Rev. Fr. Francis Onyebuchi UNEGBU (PhD)*
*Noble Mentor*
