By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
NATIONAL
The long holidays are here! This is the most extended break for school children and it can be a long one for parents if they do not have effective plans on how to engage their children.
When it comes to the school holidays, most parents have mixed feelings since some think they are relieved to have a break from the routine of early school drop offs and hours of homework. Parent whose children are coming back from boarding schools, think this is the time they get to have an extra helping hand around the house.
In the same breath however, dreading having to find ways to engage their children in home activities. These mixed feelings are heightened for parents/guardians of teenagers.
Due to the COVID-29 pandemic, majority of the world’s population now lives in economic hardships especially in the rural areas which are home to most of the world’s poor people.
This has hardened life in rural areas and peri-urban slums that has always been frequently characterized by lack of access to basic necessities, poor living and working standards exposing many teenage girls and boys into sexual exploitation and abuse, HIV and AIDS, and violence. Unfortunately, most of these risks are heightened during school holidays.
Despite these risks, relatively little is known about guiding children to utilize their holidays profitably, supporting their spiritual growth as well as safeguarding them from societal harms.
Parents and guardians are constantly fighting silent battles between giving the teenagers freedom and imposing domestic lockdown to, perhaps, ensure their safety and maintain some level of sanity during the school holidays. They fear that allowing their teenagers too much leeway may land them in bad company or negatively rewarding behaviors such as exposure to unwanted pregnancies, sexual immorality and drug abuse.
Parents are yet again put in the uncomfortable position of grappling with balancing their children’s need to socialize and that of shielding them from bad influence in the community.
Jerome Twebaze, a senior educationist and proprietor St. Jerome Primary School in Kashensero sub-county Ruhinda county Mitooma district says practices and mechanisms to use in responding to guiding children to utilize holidays profitably and also protecting them from violations against their rights should be put in place.
“A message to you parents and guardians is that you guide holiday makers to utilize this time profitably. Let the learners not be redundant to avoid unnecessary mistakes. Let them do something in terms of house work, farming,etc. Academic work should also be thought about,” says Twebaze
Twebaze further appeals to parents to develop the learners spiritually by praying and interacting with worshipping centers stating that this will instill moral discipline to the children.
Statistics have shown that, defilement reportedly occurs frequently, most often in households by relatives and people known to the survivors. Poverty leads girls to frequently trade sex for food, money, mobile phones, payment of school fees, and necessities such as sanitary pads. On the other hand, boys often engage in sex with older, single women in exchange for paid work or a place to live. Particularly among teenagers, transactional sex is alarmingly widespread.
Twebaze suggests that individual adults abusing young women sexually should be alienated from the society. He argues that protecting a girl child should be a concern for everyone.
This is why we commonly say; “When you educate a female, you educate a nation while when you educate a male, you educate an individual,” he adding, “A girl is vulnerable to many dangers. Everybody must protect her from sexual harassment because once she is sexually abused, the repurcursion is permanent. Adults who abuse girls sexually must be alienated from the public in order to curb versus future danger.”
Lydia Nankyinga, a mental health activist implores parents and guardians to cultivate a healthy relationship with their teenage children in the holidays because that is the most fragile period in a child’s life.
Apparently, there is a growing trend of attempted suicide and suicide cases rising in teenage children which makes it paramount important for parents and guardians to keep watchover their children in the holidays. This term’s holiday is the longest in the year with lots of festivities in Christmas likely to expose learners to varoius peers and new environments. Students in Advanced level (senior six) countrywide are also soon completing their UACE exams awaiting for longer holidays which require extra guidelines on keeping them busy.
