I want to talk about the paradox of successful parenting, teaching and counseling. The use of the word ‘paradox’ satisfactorily describes the complexity involved in dealing with children. Look at this example: the child is father to the man, or the student is a teacher. The paradox can be interpreted to means parents who are overly anxious to be perfect may end up failing terribly to achieve the desired results; and overly anxious teacher may fail to produce academically and emotionally balanced student, and so is the well intentioned counselor who fails to appreciate the intertwined conflict within his client.

Let me be specific. A parent who has an excellent student and became an engineer may have a burning desire to have his son to be equally such a serious student. Unfortunately, the son got carried away by peer pressure and become a self-styled dancer in a local joint or in a school. He begins to get into trouble academically such that while he got over 400 marks in KCSE, now he is only managing a D in a competitive school. The disappointed father compares the boy with the young sister or brother in lower classes and gives the failing boy a piece of his mind. The boy’s mother joins in and becomes a ‘counselor’ in the house trying the commonsense counseling heard in church or with other frustrated mothers. ‘You know how much I love you! Why are you not performing? You know I would do anything for you to do well in school.”