Mentorship: A word of advice for parents

Every parent with a teenager coming home for this very long vacation should take time off their busy schedules to plan the best parenting menu for their children.

Essentially, this plan should be beyond the diet, the places to go out to for a fun day, or the presents to buy.

It should be a considered approached to creating from our sons and daughters model gentlemen and ladies; an approach that is bred in the uniqueness of the family structures and the distinctiveness of the challenges every family goes through.

And although some will quickly dismiss the opinion that single parenthood no walk in the park, it is irrefutable that it is more demanding than it is to most two-parent family responsibility.

While single parenthood requires a delicate juggling act that involves balancing the work demands, the “self” demands, and the parenting roles, there is often sharing and company in two-parent families.

Irrespective of these challenges, single parents need not abandon the quest for best ways to inculcate and develop noble attributes to children.

Notably, the intricacies of parenting children of the opposite gender is a migraine to most single parents as soon as their charges hit the teen phase. Interestingly, hanging out with these same children at ages below 12 years was big fun.

They were then mommy’s or daddy’s pride and their parent was their friend and confidant. They shared little joys and the children challenges that at times pass as laughable. What then should parents, particularly single ones, do to ensure wholesome development of their teenagers?

First, parents need to know that they can never model what being the best of the opposite gender entails. It is true that they will often enumerate to their children the finest attributes for gentlemen, ladies, husbands or wives.

They lecture children on virtues to cultivate to become model adults. However, it is indisputable that there are still innumerable things that they do not explain to their children and that their sons and daughters can only learn them by observation.

As such, it is vital for parents to utilize a part of this vacation to establish rapport with their relations as a measure to obtain the best mentor for their sons or daughters.

Second, parents should appreciate that they are often limited by numerous gender sensitivities in their parenting roles.

For instance, parents of the opposite sex ought not to bathe their children after they have matered their potty training.

Though books may extenuate the impact of these cultural and gender biases, parents must understand that book knowledge on the puberty changes will most likely remain book knowledge until a caring parent or a mentor walks a child through the stage.

Third, evidently, men are more closed to asking for help than women. Find a mentor for children to discuss peers, best sizes for bras, breastfeeding and best brands of sanitary towels and diapers, football, politics and daughters’ development challenges.

- Dr Mwirigi is a researcher, author, and Principal, Kagumo High School. [email protected]