Stop Sending Your Children to Friends and Family Members to Help Raise Them

African parents, please stop sending your kids to friends and relatives!

I have written this article on behalf of the young generation. When you see what’s going on in the African community, you will be moved to tears.

I had the pleasure of speaking with a young girl that hawks on the street. Ayo is a 17-year-old girl who lives with her parents in Ibadan. She shared her story with me and how her parents pushed her into a home that ended her dreams.

In our conversation, she revealed how the poor financial state of his parents made them send her to a family friend who promised to help raise her. What the guardian promised was to send her to the university after she completed her secondary school education but that was not the case with the poor girl.

Since all his kids are grown up and they are away from home, Ayo’s parents agreed to let the poor girl go live with him. The 52-year-old man and his wife run a small food canteen down the busy market at Aleshinloye. They set up the business after both lost their jobs in a private company in 2010.

Ayo moved into the home with them and follow them to shop. They’d return home every evening, around 8 p.m.

Ayo expected to be enrolled in a school so she could retake her WAEC exams based on the promise he made to the father that had prompted him to release her, but that seemed to be an empty promise.

The poor girl worked in the canteen as a food vendor and ended up falling into bad associations. She started having emotional affairs with the opposite sex since there was nobody to caution her. Her Guardian was only interested in the business, that is, we must make profits today.

Poor Ayo had no one to caution her or listen to her, she ended up having an unwanted pregnancy, did abortion and was sent back to her parents. The dream to further her education became a mirage.

I was moved to tears and decided to write this article to educate and also plead with our parents.

First and foremost, nobody can take care of your child(ren) like you. Often times, I have seen parents send their child/children to family members or friends to help train their child/children simply because they feel they are not financially capable of raising them.

Most of the time, it ends up in tears and regrets. Some children have been exposed to bad gangs who taught them drugs and prostitution in the process. Some of these children have become thugs and robbers in the street and on the highway.

We can’t afford to keep jeopardizing the future of our children. Listen, you don’t need much to raise your kids. Give them the necessary attention and send them to schools that are free or less expensive.

If you can’t afford their schooling, let them learn good work that will serve them in the future. They can go to school later. Nobody is too old to go back to school. Their safety and development should be your priority.

Besides, if you can’t feed yourself, don’t bring too many children into this world. Enough of giving birth to twelve children and having the mindset of – it is God that takes care of us.

Yes, I won’t dispute that – God takes care of us. But the same God encourages every man to estimate how much a building project costs before embarking on it. Unless he wants to become a laughing stock in the society.

Stop ruining the future of these innocent children. I know parents who are struggling to eat, still, they give birth to ten children. Isn’t that madness? You know your financial status, why do that?

Africans must do more. Our economy doesn’t support having too many kids. If you calculate how much it takes to train a child, then you will understand the situation in the country.

We need to get it right that our children are our future, please, stop giving them up easily to family members or friends. They will only sell empty words to you. Only a few will stand by their words. Your future is too precious to be messed with.

But my question is, ”Do you even value your future?”