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“Your children need your presence more than your presents.” – Jesse Jackson

If there is any time children in school look forward to, it is recess. It doesn’t matter whether they are in boarding or day schools.

They have been away for three months — for those in boarding schools — without hearing the voices of their parents and guardians. The approach of school holidays is equally exciting to those who attend day schools. They will be able to see their parents slightly longer than they do during weekdays.

Regardless of which school they attend, the children are involuntarily separated from home. For children, home is where their parents are. Sweet home, regardless of their physical conditions.

They know in their hearts that home and school have different purposes. Inwardly, they know that home provides a comfortable and safe environment for individuals or families to live. They know without the polemics from schools of education that the purpose of the school is to provide education and learning opportunities for students.

School holidays, therefore, have a double meaning for them. First, it is a time to break from the rigours of school life. Class hours, break time, lunch time. Games. Preps. Sleep and then the routine starts all over again, come morning. School holidays are a time for relaxation.

Second, school holidays are a time for reunion with parents and siblings, scattered in various secondary schools and, for those who remained at home — in day primary schools and those yet to begin schooling.

It doesn’t matter how many times they have had school holidays. Every approaching April, August and December holidays is a time for excitement, expectations for family bonding.

The sheer physical presence of parents is itself nourishing. The presence of parents means care, compassion, protection from all manner of dragons.

The kind of socialisation that takes place at home, in the presence of parents, is so different from the socialisation at school.

At school, it is socialisation at peer level. Children sharing and comparing notes with fellow children. They socialise with fellow children who are at another level, on academic lines, receive labels, courtesy of an assessment or examination system which slots them into this or that category.

At home, in the community, particularly in rural Kenya where the majority of children come from, socialisation is on multiple layers or fronts. You socialise with parents and adults in general — and the socialisation is on many issues, and the topic is not preplanned. It depends on the exigencies of the situations and occasions you find yourself. Socialisation is almost always around personal lives and impact on those you know or have heard about. Relatives.

The breakfast, lunch and dinner tables are a kind of classroom where all sorts of education will happen. At cultural gatherings, weddings, funeral ceremonies — things will crop up and the children will hear or observe things, all the while parents talking or present during the occasion.

Children are free to be themselves. To cry. To play. To play hide and seek games, and to fool around with their parents. There are times when parents can decide to be silly and fool around with their children. Those with a musical bent can sing and dance with the children. There is no more exciting experience for children than this.

This is the idyllic environment children going home for school holidays imagine.

Regrettably, however, some parents have disappointed their children. For parents, school holidays are a time for relaxation, for travel, for chasing career dreams. Some parents literally convert their elder children into surrogate parents. They delegate responsibilities to them — taking care of the younger ones and other domestic choirs — while away for work-related activities or for studies.

They don’t now. At heart, that teenage child is a child still. He or she needs as much care and as much belonging as that six-year-old child in the family. He or she has needs at his or her age that only a parent and nobody else should attend to.

— The writer is a Communication Specialist; [email protected]