lighthouseNGN

A 28-year-old third son reached out this morning for counsel. He’d just had a sharp misunderstanding with his mother after she compared him to his age mates who had already built houses. He wants to move from where he’s currently living; she keeps telling him not to keep shifting places. When he pushed back and told her never to compare him like that again, she replied that she would no longer interfere in his life. He was considering disowning her completely and cutting association. He is into building design and construction. His older brothers are not faring much better: the first runs a barbing salon and does tattoos in Lagos; the second is a soldier whose earnings barely sustain him. The fourth child (a daughter) was married off by their mother without the siblings knowing. She is now a single mother of one. The fifth son is still an apprentice trailer driver, yet the mother still calls him for money. Their father is alive and the parents remain married, though the bond is weak. The father knows the pressure the mother puts on the children and has advised them to focus on building genuine networks and never steal to survive. He (their father) was terribly sick in the hospital and recovering from PTB around the time the sister’s marriage happened and says he neither knew the husband nor received a visit from him. The young man only learned of the marriage when his sister was heavily pregnant; when he confronted their mother, the explanation she offered did not sound genuine to him. He has since told her he will never interfere in anything to do with the girl's life. Some of the friends the mother compares him to are into “yahoo.” He does not associate with them. One other friend runs a POS business and finished a room-and-parlour self-contained last year; another is a trailer driver currently working as a motor boy because no company has hired him yet. The mother knows some of those friends are into yahoo and once advised him to get closer to one who had renovated his parents’ house with his yahoo money. He refused, and she stopped speaking to him for a while. After my conversation with him to get more vlaryry, the counsel given was that he cannot disown his mother, but he should keep his distance and stop telling her every plan or move he intends to make. He accepted it, thanked me for the time, and said he appreciated the advice. What would you have told him? End.