I visited the home of a senior friend of mine whom I hold in very high esteem once and the behaviour and attitude of his young children really marvelled me. I couldn’t help but imagine how a polite, humble man with good character will raise children that are such opposites of him in terms of their behaviour and attitude.
As I kept pondering on the kids behaviours, I asked myself what could be missing? Obviously the children attend very good schools they have good Christian parents who are working quite hard to provide them a great future, they have house helps and Nannies to attend to them, and just then it occurred to me, that the kids lack a mother.
You see while their mother was in the house, she wasn’t so much in their lives. She loves them care for them, provide for them, but these kids still in their formative years are being raised by the house helps. It then reminded me of the words of an ancient Greek philosopher, who once said, “Give your child to be educated by a slave, and instead of one slave, you will have two.”
I have heard parents react to a child misbehaviour or utterance of a negative word by asking the child, “Who taught you that, because it’s definitely not from me?” children learn through modelling and imitating. They model their gestures, their speech, their habits, their character after those of the people close to them. So if you want your child to have a good character, present him with a good model, and the model that should be constantly before the child is the mother.
Schools and teachers have their place and shouldn’t take the place of the mother, as a wise man once observed, one good mother is worth a hundred school teacher to young child. What about the fathers you may want to ask.
Of course fathers do have a role to play, but it has been observed that in homes where the father turned out badly – become a drunk, and “gone to the dogs” or faced some terrible misfortune and left the care of the home and raising of the kids to a good and sensible mother, the children in most often turn out honourably in life; whereas in opposite situations, where the mother turns out badly, no matter how well-conducted the father may be, the instances of later -success in life on the part of the children are comparatively small.
We may not often hear of great women as we often hear about great men. While women may not have designed great buildings, or painted great art, or carved great sculptures, women may not have not have invented algebra, nor aeroplanes, nor the internet nor written great poems, they have done something far greater than all these which they world may have failed to give them credit. It is the women, the mothers, who at their knees, have all the great people being celebrated today been trained.
Vincent Egoro 
Your post reminds me of one I posted last one titled “we all have thorns”. Each one of us have their own thorn coming in different forms. When you look at another’s thorn it looks like a simple thing because it is not your portion. When you don’t have issues with forgiveness you get surprised when you see a person who decides to hold on to something that hurts. Paul says the thorn was to humble him. The reason I wrote the post, was after I looked at how my wife siblings relate with her, I initially took it lite and thought that she can easily address but I later told her that this looks easy for me to address because it’s not my portion but I also have my own portion that to another person is a non-issue.
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Your “Mothers Wanted” post is so true. In this day and age, mothers are expected to work outside the house as well as inside so their emotions are stirred much more-so than in the earlier years. My grandparents were the best. They were always ‘there’ for me. I was the 2nd out of 6 children and when the rent, food prices, just living itself, in the 70’s got out of control, Mum also needed to work, so she ‘wasn’t there’ for us 6 children. We needed to do the house work as well as go to school, as well as look after ourselves because both of our parents worked to keep us. This resulted in our parents plus us 6 children being split. 3 went with Mum and 3 went with Dad. Now, all I can say is, Thank God for the one who invented the computer, as we all keep in touch.
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