Every child, whether male or female, has its own peculiar needs which responsible parents are expected to satisfy. Some of these needs are not just materialistic but psychological and emotional as well. Unfortunately, more often than not, we focus only on the girl child forgetting that the male child is also an endangered species. Many female adults have taken advantage of many boys, preying on their innocence, defiling, and introducing them to sex very early. Some of these boys have transferred the psychological trauma of such sexual encounters into their adult life. Women who marry such traumatized men have a herculean task to perform as far as their sex life is concerned because she is either dealing with a beast or a man with low self-esteem.
It’s an understatement that the boy child can also be exposed to the sexual exploitation of wayward female adults. Poor societal orientation has allowed the sexual exploitation of these vermins to continue to thrive unchecked coupled with the society’s ignorance of the existence of such underhanded activities. We never believed that a boy child can be sexually abused. If we keep high level of vigilance, we may be surprised to note that there are more criminals in skirts than there are in trousers.
It was weird when girls were warned not to be left alone in the company of a particular boy in my primary school days. As early as primary two, Jerry (not his real name) had already become Mr. Randy. He was about my age but was in an immediate lower class than mine. He had a bulky frame that didn’t hinder his footballing ability and prowess. He was very athletic. However, he had this crazy knack for girls. His sexual escapades in the ladies rest room, eventually led to his expulsion from the school.
When most of us saw girls the same way we saw boys, his mind was already trained to see them differently. As I grew into puberty, I still found it difficult to decipher how a preteen can become so sexually active, more so in a very provocative way like him. However, as I became matured, the stories we heard about him began to add up. He was introduced into sex by their house help, and then he started doing it with older girls and adults when some of us didn’t even know what sex is all about.
There is also the story of a twenty-eight-year-old young man that I ministered to many years ago in 2000. He was introduced into sex at the age of four by an older lady in the neighbourhood. According to him, she set him on her laps and inserted his ‘thing’ into her private part. Since then, he started sleeping with all the little girls in the neighborhood. He later graduated to sleeping with animals when he became insatiated with human beings. However, Jesus set him free through the tape cassette of our first crusade in Saki, which was held in 2000.
I can vividly recall the case of a young man from one of the tertiary institutions. He was raised by a single mother who lived abroad. Apparently, the woman had remarried and perhaps based on agreement with her spouse, she decided to place the poor boy in a boarding school without parental covering at a very early age. He was exposed to sexual vermins prowling in the school environment. There was nothing he lacked in terms of material provisions, except parental oversight. He was defiled in the dormitory by the house mistress when he was in primary two. Every child needs a touch of humanity which the parents are in the best position to provide, otherwise, he’ll end up as a beast. According to him, the woman started touching him seductively, and later graduated to fondling his manhood after taking him on an ego trip by praising him for the size of his thing. Before long, she started sleeping with him.
He couldn’t bring himself to explain his ordeal to his mom whenever she arrived Nigeria for holiday, because there was no emotional connection for this to happen. She made the boy not to tell anyone and started bribing him with gifts. Over time the innocent boy began to lose the sense of guilt which was soon overtaken by the desire for more sinful pleasures. Expectedly, he started sleeping with the girls in the hostel. By the time he got to the secondary school, which was another boarding school; news of his notoriety among girls had began to spread. One of the women who had oversight of hostel activities got wind of his sexcapades, took advantage of him as a price for keeping his dirty secrets from the school authorities. Over time, he grew to become a gigolo, and a menace to his classmates until God set him free through my counseling and deliverance prayer sessions in a tertiary institution.
What about cases of homosexuality- boys sleeping with boys? This is rampant in most boarding schools. To escape school bullies, they give their bodies as toy objects. A child that has a constant emotional touch with his parents will escape these lewd activities. Some others resort to drugs and alcohols to numb the constant emotional torture inflicted by teachers and school mates. Others seek recourse in cultism and other evil vices just to receive societal acceptance.
I remember an incident that occurred before the officials of the Ministry of Education in Oyo state sometime in 2012 when my son was among the few students from Oyo state that qualified to be admitted into the Federal Government Academy for the Gifted and the Talented. During a meeting that parents of the qualified students were having with ministry officials, I withstood a ‘powerful’ woman whose comments suggested that special preference should be given to the girls above the boys on the ground that the girls are liable to sexual exploitation. I resisted the move and ensured that both boys and girls enjoyed an equal measure of treatment and regard from the Oyo state government by making it categorically clear that adult women like her have also been found wanting in matters of exploitative sexual dealings with small boys. Up till now, I have no regrets for my brashness, for that is the best way to put such people in their rightful place.
Many men have been turned into sex slaves right from boyhood. We need to remove the hood that the enemy has used to cover the eyes of society into thinking that nothing is amiss as far as the boy child is concerned. One other area where the boy child is dehumanized and traumatized is in his masculinity. It’s not a crime to be a male child. The tendency to expect a boy child not to react to pains has been inculcated into him by society from boyhood. Therefore, he swallows the pain as he’s expected and ultimately dies in silence without anyone knowing the cause of death.
Many men are dying of depression daily. Instead of owning up to their pains, fears, and challenges, they man up because that’s a societal expectation of them, and so in the process of trying to man up they eventually man down. In other words, one man goes down. Weeping or crying are divinely created vents for letting out the steams of pains and frustrations. Those who try to man up by bottling up these emotions eventually suffer a devastating emotional cum psychological implosion.
Even Jesus the Son of God wept. He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, when He foresaw the evil that will befall Jerusalem, and in the garden of Gethsemane. Thereafter, He received the strength to face the cross. That’s why the Bible teaches that”… weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning”. Ps.30:5. At the end of every weeping is a breakthrough.
The boy child is the pillar of support for tomorrow’s people. Caring for them is tantamount to caring for the future. He carries the woman of the house, his children, the extended family, and the entire society by implication. If his mind has been wounded from boyhood, how can he bear these burdens?
At fifteen (15), my first boy had an exceptionally excellent result; so, I thought until his immediate younger brother sat for his own WAEC. I took him for admission for the A’level program which he eventually used to gain direct admission to study Medicine and surgery in the College of Health Sciences. The proprietor of the school embarrassed him when he repeatedly asked if the age he gave was his actual age. I tried to control my vexation, waiting for the man to be civil in handling my boy. After the boy had answered him severally in the affirmative that the age he gave was his correct age, he then proceeded to ask whether he was the one that sat for the WAEC exam. The boy answered in the affirmative. Then he went further,”I
hope nobody did the exam for you”.
At that point, I lost my cool. “What line of questioning are you throwing at my boy? You doubted his age initially, right in my presence.ⁿ And now, you’re still doubting his results. You can test him now to cure your doubts”. The man, seeing my annoyance, started apologizing.” I don’t joke with my kids. You’re simply embarrassing the young man. I won’t take it from you or anybody”. I retorted. “As an educationist, don’t you know that you’re trying to create an emotional and psychological upset for the boy?” He pleaded with me and promised that such a thing won’t repeat itself.
Sometime later, he sat for a test and came second despite starting the A-level class about six months behind schedule. The Biology teacher was shell-shocked to discover that my boy provided internet answers to some of the questions. So, he concluded that the boy must have cheated. He was summoned before a school panel. He was asked to re-answer the questions, and he gave the same answer word for word just as it was in his answer script which was been checked as he was answering the questions. The proprietor later apologized to him for mistaking him for a cheat, and with the promise that he shouldn’t allow me to know.
By the grace of God, I have trained my children in such a way as not to hide anything from either their mom or me. So, the boy informed his mom during a routine visit to his school. She intervened and the matter was resolved amicably. Unfortunately for the school authorities, my wife unknowingly spilled the beans during one of our tete a tete. Without much ado, I drove about four hours to the school. I could see palpable fear on everyone’s faces as soon as I appeared. “I want to see my boy”, I said, after exchanging pleasantries.
My boy was shocked to see me in the proprietor’s office. I told everybody what I heard. “Daddy, we have already sorted it out”, the proprietor said defensively. ” We’ve already apologized to him”. “But I personally apologized and begged you not to inform daddy”, he said to my boy. ” Yes sir”, the boy said.” There is a way my dad used to ask probing questions in which it was difficult for me not to tell him the truth knowing full well he has already told us not to lie for whatever reason”. The matter was laid to rest. Within six months of preparing for the A-level exams, my boy bagged thirteen (13) points. I was surprised to find out that they were still shocked at his scores, despite the fact that he wrote the exams under their supervision. There will always be doubting Thomases, no matter how hard one tries to convince them.
As a father, it’s my responsibility to ensure that nobody puts any of my children (whether the boys or girl) in his or her own mould. No one should be allowed to define your child’s destiny other than you. As parents, the onus is on us to cater for their psychological needs and defend them as well, not just to take care of their material needs. Most parents provide for the latter and ignore the former. It’s an egregious error that will have a profound telling effect on the future of the child.
Just like the girl child, boys also have emotional and psychological needs. Stop telling your boy to man up or he’ll man down one day.
Finally, the best way to help the boy child is by becoming an effective role model as a father. Live such a life that is worthy of emulation, and that can make your boy repose confidence in you and himself. Demonstrate faith, fearlessness, and humaneness. Let your kids see your human side. It is dangerous to pretend that you’re some sort of superhuman being that can’t feel. Sometimes, God allows us to pass through odious circumstances so that our children can learn how to overcome them when they come across similar patterns in their life and time.
Jesus didn’t hide His moments of weakness from His disciples. So, when they experienced their moments of weakness, they simply did what He did during His. They prayed just as He did. Let your kids know that it’s not a sign of weakness to cry and weep, but that one must learn to quickly pick one’s self from that state of brokenness. Let your kids know that there is no crime in being annoyed if you must be, but you must ensure that you’re in control of your emotional state. Let them see you manifest your humanity and then control it. You are the guinea pig that God will use in the laboratory of life, to teach your children the realities of the challenges of life; so that they can follow the same method(s) that you employed in conquering those challenges in their own life and time.
