An aunt’s day out with her nephews turned to a lesson in life skills (aka, survival skills, street wisdom) for my older nephew and a shock to me.
On our way home, I packed my car by the road side to buy bread. As you know, the fear of LASTMA is the beginning of wisdom so I had to devise a means to get the bread I needed without stepping out of the car occupied by my affectionately rambunctious 9 & 4 years old nephews. So, I decided to put the older nephew’s (Yemi) exuberance to productive use since I was having a hard time controlling them after a large intake of sugar & caffeine. Yes, that would be soft drinks, ice cream 
etc.
I gave Yemi a N500 note and told him to get a pack of sliced bread from the shop. He turned to me squealing “I can’t do it, they will cheat me!” Now, that shocked me because at age 9 we middle class kids were butter enough to know Barney & friends, Different Strokes but also wise enough to go down the street (even if with an escort) to buy this and that for our parents, uncle or aunt.
Well, I didn’t bother going down memory lane with him as I would have loved to. But I encouraged him to try something new and exciting! He bought it hook, line and sinker. More so, he would earn points on his responsibility chart which he wasn’t doing so good on 4 months after having started it. That’s another story for another day. Suffice to say that, for every responsible act or thought, he earns a point until he gets to 20 points when he wins a gift. Don’t ask about the gift cuz I’m still thinking . After my pep talk, he asked for more information about how to approach the sales counter and make a purchase. It was comical considering the fact that it was just a fast food joint with fixed prices but he was really excited to do this so I decided to indulge him by starting from the very beginning of how to cross the road, enter the shop as if you own it (more like as if he visits it daily without an adult escort), turn right to get the bread and just hand the money over to the sales attendant.
Yemi was really into it and then asked for the price of the bread, did a quick maths session and informed me that he would be returning with N290 change. He also suggested that he had to count it before he left the shop to ensure he got the correct amount. I excitedly said yes! What a quick learner.
He went in alone (under my watchful eyes nestled few feet away in the car – one can’t be too careful in a city of 17 million people), completed his transaction, returned excitedly to the car and asked that henceforth he should buy the bread or run such other errands. Simple, story but I learnt several things from it. We shelter kids too much and we should consider giving ourselves or even the domestic help a break sometimes so that our kids will be empowered with some survival skills instead of mugun skills.
Watch out for Danfo & A Butter (buha) Tween’s first experience.
