Parenting and its impact on education

Parenting and its impact on education

By: Timothy Makokha

The joy of a parent is to see their children succeed academically. Whatever event that occurs in the children environment, affects their organization at school. For instance when parents quarrel before their children, it makes the children wonder and worry making them unsettled in class. The outcome can be poor results at an exam.

When children hear their mother cry every night, they become unsettled in class hence poor results. According to Henry Mulunda, an inspector of schools within Bungoma south, sometime in history a student in the USA went to court to file a divorce for her parents and the court ruled in favor of the young lady. The couple had to separate for the good of the school going child who complained that constant quarrels among the parents had affected her negatively.

Pupils should be provided with school uniform to create uniformity among them. Imagine a case of a pupil without uniforms in class where the rest of her friends are in uniform. Such a pupil will feel odd one out and won’t feel free to mix with others. The outcome is poor results.

Cases are reported of pupils with badly patched uniforms who suffer inferiority complex. Uniforms with open patches makes a pupil feel shy in class. Such scenarios can as well cause a drop in the pupil’s performance.

Boys lacking underwear can erect naturally in class and feel embarrassed because of the protrusion in the pair of short. Children at puberty erect so regularly and for this reason they are supposed to be given underwear to save them the embarrassment.

 This reminds me of the days when I was in class six. My classmate was called by the teacher to rub the blackboard but when the boy stood to move in front, everyone (boys and girls) laughed at him as he was erected and it was showing in the pair of shorts. Chances were that he didn’t have underwear.

To counter such scenarios, some pupils resort to walking in hanging shirts and get punished by teachers regularly.  Continuous punishment affects pupils psychologically and they end up performing poorly in class.

Girls attain their puberty when still in primary school and at such a tender age some of them may not be aware of the requirements needed during times of their monthly periods. Parents especially mothers need to be close to girls at this stage to give them needs and direction on how to conduct themselves during their periods.

A similar case occurred when we were in primary school; boys would complain that sometimes girls stink especially after a P.E lesson. The reason was later discovered that some girls didn’t know how to clean themselves during their periods. Such cases were not to occur if parents were caring for their children. 

I recall one of our P.E lessons when a girl was embarrassed when rags that she was using instead of sanitary pads fell down when we were running in the field. The incident made the girl to absent from school for a period of two weeks and by that time we were candidates in class eight.

Lack of sanitary pads makes girls in primary schools to absent themselves from school to avoid embarrassments before her friends at school. You will see some of them giving excuses to be away from school for a whole week, only to resume later after her periods. If this goes on for every month how many lessons would such a pupil miss? Would you expect her to perform equally well like her classmates who attended classes regularly?

Lucky enough the government and other NGO’s/well wishers have stepped in to provide sanitary pads for girls in primary schools. A move that has saved very many girls in this country.

Parents are a major role model to their children. The young will always admire what their parents do. For this reason, parents need to be keener on their behavior. A story is told of a Kenyan woman who had a baby. The woman bought a toy baby for her child, the child loved the toy so much and could do everything like a mother does to her baby. The woman delivered another baby, while doing anything to the new born the older child does the same to her doll. One day she carried the little baby accompanied by the other baby with her doll. The lady instructed the girl to take care of the baby as she continued washing.  The girl continued playing with her doll leaving the baby to cry, her mother got annoyed, threw the doll in the river and beat her and continued washing. The girl took the baby and threw her in the river the same way mother threw hers (doll). It was too late for the woman to save the baby. Who caused the problem?