“Please write down your name sir.” I said to the man seated in front of me.
He took the pen I offered him and began to write. His daughter stood by his side. She was probably about four or five years old. I smiled at her.
Maybe it was the smile that attracted her, I have no idea but she decided to walk round the table. She stood beside me as I continued to attend to her father. She opened my side drawer and took out the milo sachet I had bought the previous day.
She walked back to her father with the milo sachet in her hand. What I heard next was definitely not what I was expecting.
“Did you say thank you?” Her father asked her.
I looked up at the man with unbelieving eyes. The milo sachet was the medium family size not the mini ones.
“Say thank you.” The man said to his daughter.
The little girl shrugged her right shoulder in defiance.
“Say thank you.” The father repeated but his daughter ignored him.
I was done attending to him and I handed him what he had come to pick up.
As father and daughter walked out of my office with my milo sachet, I shook my head. I also had kids but it was not in my place to tell a father how to train his child.
If the father saw nothing wrong with his daughter taking what was not hers, then I had no words for him.
The “say thank you” and the defiance showed by the daughter was also a source of concern but well….
If at that age, her father was unable to exercise his authority over her, I wondered what the future held for both of them. Parenting is the most important job anyone with kids would ever do. There are no perfect parents but there are bad parents; parenting definitely does not come with a manual.
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