Why my Dad was hard on me

My Dad was hard on me but not negatively, it was more about him really pushing me and my siblings very hard on studies and being disciplined. He really went out of his way to push us to study, work hard in everything we did and avoid games, when I say hard I mean really hard. To kind of put things into perspective, there were nothing like public holidays, outings or celebrations, any single opportunity he had with us at home, you could be sure we’ll be hitting the books, every Saturday and Sundays saw us homeschooled; birthdays, new years, public holidays etc any time he was home with us, you could be sure of one thing, there was no playing around. Whenever he returned home he was quick to put an end to any and every semblance of play, we could only put in some game time or even watch Tv when he wasn’t at home, it became some kind of cat and mouse game to some extent, LoL We’ll all be wishing he goes out so that we could have time to watch some Tv and whenever we heard the sound of his car at the gate, that would be like the red alert and everyone would run in a frenzy trying to find a book to pretend to be reading.

At the time it didn’t really make much sense because he really went out of his way to push us to study, it wasn’t like we were doing bad in school, even coming out top of the class didn’t give you any time off, if anything else it rather put you in the position to teach others or serve as a muse to undermine others. Looking back at it now I understand totally the feelings my dad had and the reasons why he went to such lengths to do all of that, but I think he could have done things a little differently.

His Backstory

My Dad grew up at a time where there weren’t too many people excelling all around him, he probably had to really grind hard to ensure he took himself and his family out of the poverty they were in, an experience which undeniably cemented into him the importance of hard work. He knew working hard was the only way to make it in this life, in his era there were nothing like smartphones or people dancing on tiktok to earn a living, you could be sure that the only way to make it out of the hood was hitting the books and making sure you are good at it. At those times, there was no internet and no curated content, so going through as many books as you can while reading over and over again was the surest way to master things. Thats the mentality he grew up with and thats what he tried to pass down on to us.

Obviously for children like us born in an era were there were way more distractions and fun things to do, sitting down for long hours looking at white pages was definitely the most boring thing we could possibly do, which eventually led to us resenting education and making school just all the more difficult. His strategy wasn’t innovative and didn’t take into account the updated methods of teaching, all he could do was tell you to read until you get it. At the time internet was widespread but not that available so we didn’t know we could go on there to find answers to the questions we had, so much of what we did was go through books hours unended trying to find the answers to an equation we didn’t understand, imagine the frustration not being able to get an answer from anywhere, the teachers could answers some of your questions but not all.

The adverse effects

I totally understand why he did what he did, why he was so hard and why it was important for him. He succeeded to turn around his life through studies and thats the reason why he did his best to push us to study as well because he knew that it was only a life of difficulty awaiting us if we didn’t find pleasure in education. Even today this is still true to a certain extent, your life can be really hard if you are not educated, you won’t have access to certain jobs and you will be always limited on the things you can do. His method of education could be mostly the one to blame because it is ultimately what delayed or slowed down our progress, it go to the point where we weren’t even studying because we wanted to be successful but it was rather solely to avoid getting scolded by him. Coming back with bad grades got so traumatic to the point where I’ll even consider faking my grades or destroying my report card, he would get so angry and dissapointed and would take it out on you (verbally not physically). You would be left crying, depressed and since you couldn’t hate your dad, you’ll rather hate the next best thing which was the education itself which was what was making your dad angry.

MJ’s Dad

You may not know this but Michael Jackson’s dad was also that kind of dad who really went hard, very hard you might say pushing Michael Jackson and his siblings to sing and dance very well. His dad would take it so much to the point of being violent, Michael Jackson talks about this in an interview, you can look it up. I definitely won’t agree with such an abusive dad but you can look at the consequences of that today, Michael Jackson even after his death is still considered the greatest, would this have been possible without his dad pushing him into that work ethic? Or would that have happened either ways? This could have easily gone the other way, so we won’t say this was the right way or not. We have seen new artist today blossom with an even harder work ethic doing way more work than Michael Jackson did without having an Aggressive father by their side even though we can’t claim they have achieved as much as he did.

The Importance of Hard work

This was the essential value my dad tried to pass on to us, it wasn’t always about the education but in everything we did, he insisted that we worked hard at it, was it mopping the floor or changing a light bulb, you had to put in hard work, thats why he didn’t like us watching Tv or sitting in front of a computer, because to him those were building up on our laziness. He wanted us to see what he was seeing in education at a very early age which was impossible at the time but now that I’m all grown up, I can clearly see and understand that. Hard work is essential in everything we do, even in today’s modern society you can achieve success only through hard work, the only difference being that it mustn’t necessarily be hard work in school.

One important lesson that school tries to put into us through out all those decades of studying is the capacity to learn, the world is constantly evolving and you should be able to learn all by yourself, I think thats what the education system tries so desperately to do. We may never use 90% of what we studied in school but we definitely use 100% of *how we studied* in school, by this I mean, if you were a lazy person in school, then you are going to carry on that attitude and if you were hardworking, it going to follow up aswell.

What he could have done differently

He went with what he knew best so I don’t think he could have thought about doing things differently but for any parents out there, here is what you can do. In modern times we have been able to see how letting children express themselves can be really productive, they will do what they love doing best and when they excel at it then it is even better. You don’t need to force a child down any specific path (unless the child is confused) but what you need to instill into every child is the sense of hard work and discipline in whatever they want to do, also develop in them a passion for learning new things.

There are training methods which have been proven to work very efficiently, instead of negative reinforcement, focus instead on positive reinforcement. Don’t just let your child have everything he orders for but rather make him/her earn those as a reward for doing things correctly. This is kind of what is done at school when you are given stars or grades, you can do the same for your kid except that at home he won’t be graded but rather recompensated for his hard work. You can do it with little things then escalate to even bigger things for a proportional amount of hard work, use things like internet, playtime and Tv as a reward for hard work. For example, for every 2 hours of study he gets 30 minutes of playtime and it should be made clear to them.

Most parents dissociate hard work and pleasure from their kids, basically they just focus on telling their kids to work hard but never show them the correlation of hard work and pleasure. You should make use of the pleasures of your kids to groom them into working hard, at the beginning they might not understand or appreciate it but eventually they’ll grow to like it because thats basically how life is, we all go to work in order to make money to fund our pleasures, so we work hard in order to have pleasures. As a child this wasn’t like that, I just knew I had a lot of fun time but there was school which was that chore I had to do but I never saw a link between them.

My dad focused on negative reinforcement where he would instead make us feel bad, the reward was rather not being made to feel bad, thats why hitting your child isn’t the best way of training because once the kid is independent, there is no other incentive to work hard anymore, since nobody is hitting on him again. My dad wasn’t aware of the modern day training techniques and didn’t receive any formal training on how to train or communicate so thats no suprise to me the way he went about it, but I think modern day parents have a lot of resources at their disposal on how to groom their kids. You shouldn’t traumatize your kids into liking school but rather groom them into the hardwork-reward cycle.

Conclusion

I did become hard working and I did find some pleasure in learning and education but that only came years later after so many failures, pain and tears. I would say it is rather hardship which pushed me into becoming what my father tried to do, his scolding and aggressive tactics only served to delay my growth, it was only when I was pushed back against the wall that I realized the importance of study (a little like what he went through). I believe when kids understand all the good things which come with working hard, they are more likely to push themselves harder and actually find pleasure in studying than anything else.

Thanks for reading

Check out my blog realjema.com