By Bunmi Sofola
RECENTLY, Frieda, the head of a leading private school, lamented that modern parents are praising their children to the hilt and bringing up their daughters as if they can do no wrong. She argued that being showered with too much praise and too many presents is not a good thing for a child creating an inability to take risks because of the fear of failure. As a result, she said, girls are turning into little princesses, who lack the resilience to handle criticism or take life’s natural knocks.
Joke, in her 30s and a lawyer, said as someone who grew up with an adoring mother, she was inclined to agree with friends. “My mother doted on me,” she said.
“She was warm, affectionate, supportive and loving and I became full of myself. Even today, in my 30s, the messages of those early years – and that lover-inflated opinion I had of myself – still resonate. My mother’s constant assurances that I was brilliant led me to stumble early on in my law career through naive overconfidence, and her insistence that I was beautiful did not tally with my fat and big-bum reality. As a consequence, I have been left with life-long issues about my body.
‘My mother, a quite’ successful lawyer herself hated leaving me with the house-helps. Luckily, her job was flexible and she often took me with her along with a maid. She often felt guilty about working long hours and her divorce from my father when I was five meant she suffered a high dose of guilt. She wanted to play the role of both parents. This, combined with her unconditional love made for a potent mix, and I was more buoyed up by my mother than I deserved to be.
