How Are the Children

By Kemi Seriki

How are the children- awọn ọmọ n’ko is a customary greeting among Yoruba. With such a greeting, it shows that children’s well-being is highly acknowledged within society. Such well-being is not limited to physical health but comprises many aspects of human health, such as social connection with others and psychological welfare.

Even though Nigeria is culturally diverse with people of different ethnic groups who speak other languages, we still share some similarities in food, beliefs, and value systems. In Nigeria, it takes a whole community of family, neighbors, friends, and educators to raise children. There is a little need to solicit help when a family is facing a crisis. Someone usually steps in, whether from immediate family or other members of the community. The thinking behind communal belongings indicates that children are the product of the village, and everyone is connected.

The same collective voices that physically help raise the children also step in when there is a need for emotional support and empowerment of the youth to reach their full potentials. No wonder Nigerian immigrant strife for a high educational attainment level, hoping to achieve that American dream. Even with challenges of institutional racism, discrimination, the difficulties of navigating the new world, and the negative stigma of the Africa continent, many African immigrants continue to move ahead despite these challenges.

Whatever strength we possessed through our upbringing that fosters our determination to achieve the American dream may be challenging to transpire to the first generation born in America. We may ask why it isn’t easy to provide the rich nurturing we received at our earlier developmental stage to the first generation born in America. The answer may be evident to some of us as we may know that America is a unique society with unique needs and unique challenges.

Invisibility later becomes visible:

For some immigrant parents, the difficulties the children may be experiencing not be initially visible to an open eye. Many parents may not seem to classify it as a problem or as an issue worth addressing. For many African immigrant parents, we may believe that nurturing our children only includes providing financial support and just providing the emotional support we may feel worth addressing. We may not understand the social upheaval and emotional mayhem our children may be facing because it is unfamiliar territory. The tribulations starting from elementary school to adulthood may not be visible to us. From being bullied at school to gang violence and peer pressure to racism and police brutality to institutional racism, our children are not exempt from the same dilemma many other immigrants or minority communities face in America. And even if we are aware of these encounters, are we equipped with adequate knowledge and understanding to navigate these issues alone.

The Conflict of Understanding:

When our children complain about their difficulties, we may say to them, for example, “you don’t know what hardship is.” Then sometimes we start professing our own experience and begin to compare. We downgrade the children’s hardship and upgrade our own. For example, we may say, “when I was back home in Nigeria, I walked three miles to school daily. Before going to school, I have to go to the stream to fetch water for household use; I have to wash clothes with my hand; I have to clean dishes, cook for the family, care for my younger sibling, grind paper with mortar, etc.” Yes, we may have done all these chores in a society that shares a commonality in child-rearing. Our children may not have to do all these chores because of the accessibility of things in the developed world. The struggles, the experiences, and the challenges are different, and we cannot dismiss them.

Raising Human Being or Building a Robot:

As immigrants in America, we may try to pass down the same value familiar to us, thinking and hoping that our children would turn out to be as perfect as predicted. We have to realize that we are raising a human being and not building a robot. We want children to be industrious and follow the path of successful careers such as a doctor, lawyer, and engineer, which are the most popular career we may believe leads to a prosperous life in America. We make our dream their dream without exploring their unique talent or giving them the liberty to find themselves. We are afraid of the values outside the norm or unfamiliar territory. We expect the children to achieve these expectations without considering some of the uphill battles our children may be facing in our newly adopted home.

Cultural Value Vs. Social Structure:

For the Yoruba people reading this article, I want to touch on the word Oriki. And for those who do not understand the word and its purpose, “Oriki is a kind of Yoruba literary genre used to inspire people. It is usually in the form of poetry, consisting of songs of praise”. Oriki is passed down from generation to generation, and it is learned, memorize, and elders chant the Oriki of individuals and families. Growing up in Nigeria, many of us were endowed with the chant regularly. These chants not only reminded us of our heritage but lifted us spiritually and emotionally. Our children do not have such an advantage. We live in a secluded community in America where there is hardly anyone to provide such support. Even better, I am yet to come across a Yoruba parent in America who chants Oriki on their children. If there is such a parent, do the children understand the meaning of the chant? Many of us are guilty of our failure to speak and teach our children our native language. We speak and perfected the children with a European language, then turn around and blame them for not embracing the culture.

African immigrant parents must realize that we have something back home when we were growing up that is not accessible to our children growing up in America. What was available to us growing up was the community of intense family bonding from parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and neighbors. There was no scarcity of encouraging words, whether through prayer or praises through songs and family poetry.

America is diverse in culture, religion, and value system, but these diversities must operate under the rules of law in American society without any conflict. The United States law of the land also extends to the civil right for all individuals to receive equal treatment no matter age, race, sex, sexual orientation, disability, national origin, religion, or other characteristics. Inevitably, even though American society comprises people from diverse backgrounds with different ethnic groups and distinct cultural values, American rules of law and culture supersede any other sub-culture. In one way or another, American culture alters traditional norms familiar to immigrants’ way of life in their homelands. One would find out that one’s way of life shifts to adapt to the mainstream or dominant culture. For example, in our countries in Africa, corporal punishment is part of the norm, but it is against American law. For some parents, the adaptation is very challenging, which I will address in the future discussion.

Talking to some of our young adults in the past, they have expressed their interest in discussing many issues they face growing up in America as children of African immigrants and the challenges of being black in America. We need to bring this discussion to the open forum in our community. We have to understand that everyone is struggling with something. Once one person acknowledges the struggle openly, it gives the other people a safe space to accept and admit what they may be going through and understand that they are not alone in the battle. That in itself is empowering. The time has come to reexamine our approach to child nurturing. As parents, sometimes we need to sit down and listen to our children. Instead of lecturing our children as we regularly do, maybe we should listen. We may learn something from them.

Below is a passage from Richard Weissbourd’s article in New Republic Magazine published on February 25th, 2002, titled Why Do Immigrant Children Struggle More Than Their Parents Did?
“The more mature children are, the less likely they are to be negatively influenced by their peers. Mature children have a steady internal compass—a self that exists outside their peers’ particular impulses. And psychologists generally agree that the broad foundations of children’s’ maturity come from their parents. Children need caretakers who communicate hope about their future, transmit important social and moral expectations, regularly listen to and understand them, and reflect their understanding.”

Listed below are some of the probable challenges facing our children

1. Bullied at school by peers, gang violence, peer pressure, drug use, police brutality, and mental health problem
2. Dealing with structural and individual racism.
3. Negotiating identity and balancing act while at school, at work, with friends, and with the parent. According to one blogger Clarissa Banor, a Ghanaian-American writer, says, “Too African to be American and too American to be African. As she says, “Switching between my Black, African, and American identities is like clicking through images on a vintage View-Master toy—my identities, lenses through which I viewed the world, aren’t fixed.”
4. The pressure of a high level of educational attainment and specific specialization. As I indicated above, we want our children to be industrious and become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, which is the most popular career we believe leads to a prosperous life. The lack of liberty to choose the profession of interest and need to meet parent expectations have surfaced into emotional turmoil for many of our children
5. The lack of open dialogue or listening and understanding of the struggles children may be facing. Parents only focus on what they may feel is necessary, such as getting a good education, securing a good job, get married to an appropriate partner that would win parental approval, without understanding or addressing the emotional needs that comes with these demands.
   

It is time for our parents to adjust our parental style and dialogue with our children. Sometimes compromise to create a productive relationship with our children may come through dialogue. We may not agree with our children’s decisions or choices, but unconditional parenting comes with unconditional love and reasoning.