WHERE PARENTS GET IT WRONG

This evening, one of my neighbours' daughter rushed out of their apartment crying, because of a slap she received from her mother.
She is 16.

What was her crime?
Her mother kept screaming that she ought to have served her brother very well. Usually, I've been hiding myself from much communication in this new environment. But since most people seem to like me in the compound, I decided to be a normal human by not m

inding my business -- prevented her from landing the girl another slap.
"Mummy what is it?"
"Chibu.. told her to get him water, and she said she's tired," the woman replied.

I looked at the helpless girl and asked after her version of the issue that bred her predicament.
While sauntering in tears, she made me understand how unfair it was for her brother to order her around, after she had stayed a long while in the kitchen cooking with their mother. I was made to understand that she serves this 18 years old brother of hers all the time.

He has gotten used to it, and has started feeling entitled.
He had told her to fill the water to the brim, and she begged him to understand that she was tired. This is the first time her service to him wasn't satisfactory -- she had satisfied him on other days.

I was further furnished with the nonsense idea that her 18yrs old brother doesn't enter the kitchen. I wasn't okay with that development, so I had to let the woman understand my point.

Mind you; by the period she was crying, two other tenants came out to understand the cause of her predicament. They didn't like the whole development, and were in support of denouncing the boy's attitude -- he shouldn't feel entitled to that service.

"Mummy, we had cooking roster when we were small," I began.
I made her understand the need to make her two boys part of the kitchen too.
"Stop stressing this little girl -- iga emekwa ya ka onwe inferiority complex(you'll build up the spirit of inferiority complex in her) without knowing."

I made her understand that her sons will need those kitchen skills someday, even if not in her house.
I used an example from my NYSC days in Benin. My flat mate and fellow Youth Corper would send his girlfriend to market, because he doesn't even know the price of tomatoes.She buys everything for him, and cooks for him. He kept screaming of how his allowe finishes before second week of the month.

I would cook premium Egusi soup with 1500, while his girlfriend was fond of cooking same soup with 6k in 2011. He would wonder how my soup was always tasting far better than what he was eating. I fought myself from telling him that she was even doubling the price of some of the condiments. I couldn't do that type of Amebo.

Only told him when their relationship was no more -- his lagging in supply of funds made her leave, so I saw it as an opportunity to open his eyes. Guy man learnt how to cook Egusi soup and Vegetable before NYSC finished.
I was happy everyone laughed as I narrated the story. I made the woman's son understand the importance of cooking food for himself in future, especially when you can't afford a chef.

The woman apologized to her daughter, because everyone counseled her on the disadvantages of raising kids like that.
A friend had similar experience with her parents years ago, and I was shocked to notice that some parents are still of this primitive school of thought in 2021.

Dear Parents, the next generation of good men and women are under your wings.
Don't let them become like the current set of people causing menace to the society.