Recognition

When I was growing up, I was ignored by my parents almost every day. You see my mother always had friends she would talk to on the phone and when I asked her something she would send me away to go do something. I would feel sad after and probably go cry or just go play with my toys. She would scream at me saying “I’m on the phone Seyi come back later!” Her friends laugh at me on the phone or complain that she should discipline me more, I felt pretty embarrassed hearing her friends tell my mom that, since the thing I wanted to tell her wasn’t that important. In my life, I have not been given that much recognition, especially in schooling environments.

When I was in grade three I was ignored by almost all the kids. I don’t know if it was because I was really bad at English at the time or my presence was just unappealing to the other kids. I only had one friend in school. His name was David Gaina (he’s a real person), he was my only real friend that time, my only best friend at the time. When the other kids would send me away, my solution was just going to David to spend time with. David had other friends too so when he would branch off, I would feel alone and sad and I never really had a way to cope with the loneliness I felt at that time, since he was my only friend at the time and none of the kids would hang out with me since I was younger, and I guess weirder than most of them.

Another time I didn’t get recognition was this one time I was going to a preschool in the U.K, my mother told me this story while we were in the car. When I was around 5 or 6, the teachers in my kindergarten would show a little bit more recognition to the people with lighter skin than me. When they wanted to call a person up to do their spelling or math they would leave me out and sometimes not even call my name up to do my spelling and math. My mom was catching on to this because while growing up I had a lisp and a stutter, mainly to me not having someone teach how to speak. She sent me to this kindergarten to help my stutter and give me confidence in my words. She told me that she had an argument with my teachers to teach me and call me up to help me with my spelling and my confidence in speaking words. The teachers did not listen and never called me up since then. I never had a way to keep my confidence, since it was being ignored by my teachers. My mom really pulled through in trying to help me with confidence and speaking. She sent me to another school to help with my speaking and grammar, It worked out and I made friends and since it was a private school the teacher couldn’t be racist since my mom was basically paying their salary.

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