Life Story: A Dead Parent And Child Relationship

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It is important for parents to realize that for us to have a good, friendly, parent and child relationship in our old age, we need to build that relationship. That relationship has to be planted, nurtured and cared for with utmost importance. We must create that bond between us and our children. You don’t expect the relationship between a child and its parents to be a healthy one when you didn’t work for that. It doesn’t happen that way. Emotional bonds must be intentionally created and nurtured. Period.

My parents divorced when I was just five years old. I’m the fourth child out of my parents’ five children. Mum remarried and had another child and so did my father. Right after their divorce, my father traveled outside the country. And that was the end of his fatherhood to us, his five children. He made no attempt to create or nurture any kind of parent child relationship. He went and lived his life as if we didn’t exist.

Mum was there for us, she ensured a healthy relationship between her children and herself; a healthy relationship between parent and child. She was our anchor, she did everything for us until she died when I was just ten years old.

Before the death of my mum, our stepfather tried to take my elder sister to the USA where he resided. And so needed the approval of our biological father. Our biological father refused to sign the documents. And even went further to threaten to sue our stepfather if he dared take our big sister to the USA. He did the same when our stepfather tried to take our brother instead. Stepfather had thought our biological father wasn’t in agreement the first time because he tried to take a girl.

All the while he was blocking our chances of better opportunities and potential better life, he wasn’t being the father we needed. He was not making any effort at all to foster any kind of parent child relationship. Let’s not talk of taking an interest in our lives and our education.

Let me put it this way, he had a dog in a manger attitude; he wasn’t doing his job as a father, and yet he didn’t want another man to do it for us. Now when I think of it, it’s almost as if he purposefully wanted to ensure we were denied the all important bond between a parent and child.

Now, here we were, mum dead, stepfather came for his son leaving us to our “beloved” father. And that’s when life taught us hell. Our father never cared for us financially, physically or emotionally. Meanwhile, he was living the dream abroad as a university professor. He didn’t know how we ate or slept. Our emotional well-being didn’t give him cause for concern. He lived his life and left us to fend for ourselves.

When he left the country for the USA, I was five years old, and saw him again when I was eighteen years old. We had absolutely no parent child relationship, so let’s not even consider a healthy parent child relationship.He couldn’t even make me out. What sort of relationship do you expect me to have with him when I practically do not know him?

I got admission twice to training school and this man refused to help me pay for the admission fees. His brother was able to pay for my admission fees when he heard it from someone without asking for proof of my admission. The irony is my biological university professor father asked for the admission letter as evidence yet didn’t pay a dime. But he could organize parties for his friends, travel to another country to attend a friend’s funeral and send money to her sister to bury her husband.

It has been my big sister from the day our mother died. She did everything for us like a mother would. We ate leftovers from strangers to survive. We went out to the streets to beg for food. Big sis was put through school by her boyfriend who’s now her husband. My brothers were taken care of by our big sister’s husband. My other sister was also taken care of by her ex-boyfriend’s mother.

Now we are all grown, well educated and married with children of our own

Our “beloved” father is back in the picture and expects us to call him everyday and talk to him and be grateful. And for what, just because he gave birth to us? He suddenly recognizes that a parent and child can and must have a relationship. Magically he has become conscious of the importance of parents’ relationship with children. He now wants to bond and relate.

It doesn’t work that way. I don’t need him now to be there for me. I don’t even care what he does with his life. And I don’t know nor care how to begin to create that parent child relationship he craves now.

Healthy parent and child relationships do not happen in a vacuum. They are planted and carefully watered with love, intentional parental availability, nurturing, care, time, financial responsibility as well as mental and emotional support. For my father and his children, that tree is dead. period.

Difficult childhood? Learn from people who have overcome childhood adversity.

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