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Happy weekends guys. Hope you are enjoying this beautiful weather of this time of the year. I tell you its everything I always look 👀 forward to. Lets enjoy every bit of this season as the struggle continues.

This weeks prompt: Kids are also part of the family, and we have seen parents who don’t hide their struggles from their kids, while others do the opposite. Which is right, and why? At what age should parents expose their children to the family struggle. Thanks to our dear @george-dee for bringing this to us.

And should our children know or be involved in family struggles early enough or not? This very prompt caught me thinking 🤔 and I began to wonder through many things because it had never crossed my mind that some parents would in the first place try hiding what they are going through from their kids or wards.

Parents lives are mostly centered around their children, and always making sure to put
one plus 2 together to get the equation balanced which starts immediately a child is born because parenthood is entirely a different setting from living single.

Most parents tries to hide and keep away their struggles from their kids in other to protect them either from emotional problems or from fear that might cause them anxiety to face their peers. This is due to how and why parents believe that its their responsibility to support their children snd hide what ever they are going through until they are grown to maturity to face life on their own.

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For me personally I don’t think 💭 it’s right because I have seen many parents who struggled and ended up in blood 🩸 pressures and others in serious illnesses. Keeping our struggles from are wards are like living a double standards lifestyle because this in turn makes our children to believe that everything is okay while we are suffering inside.

The issue here is that many parents might be doing well initially in life due to the kind of business they are into that brings lots of money 💰 in, or the position they held in work places, so they might not be struggling at a point in life because the children might just be at a very tender age, and until the children starts growing up and bigger bills 💵 are starting to be paid which eventually sets in struggles . I believe that once things start being tough and not as its use to be, the children should be made to understand on how things are looking like and it could be at an early age from 7 years to 10 years when we feel children has understanding already.

I have a family friend from my church fellowship who was working with then Laferge Cement as a financial accountant and controller. Although he has built a mansion in the cause of working working for many years. But in the year 2015 the company started having problems due to government tariffs on importation of raw materials and this indeed affected the the company that many were laid off especially the big shots in the company. However, un the process of looking for another job, Dangote Cement called him for employment, but could not offer him good pay 💰 according to his experience. He totally 💯 rejected the job. What he did next was to call the wife and children and told them how every expenses should be cut down until he gets another job. In fact he told the wife that feeding should be her responsibility now since he will be facing the children school fees including that of their senior daughter that was already in London schooling then. His kids were between 13, 15 and 18 then. And because I was close to the family I was aware of all these happening, including the wife going to sell some of her gold jewelries to substitute with it.

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As a parent now I make my children understand every struggle in the family especially with how hard the economy has made things turn out. We as parents know that when kids are let inn into family struggles, it brings on fear 😨 and anxiety 😥 on the children, but left for us to also keep encouraging them of how we as parents will keep trying our best to support the despite everything. Letting them know of how things are at a given time makes them also understand the need to stop given their parents pressures in some certain areas of monetary issues. My children are made to understand how things are from the ages of 6 years. I believe in catching them while they are still young because times are changing lots of things.

This is my response to the #Hivenaija weekly prompt, edition 74.

All sourced images are credited.