Parents who overindulge their children unleash mollycoddled children and brattish adults on the society. I recently read apiece on whatsapp about a visitor’s ill-mannered son and immediately this episode floated into my consciousness, unfolding itself like a film!

We had some visitors years back who came on a visit. We were in a foreign land where any recognized dialect spoken from your country makes joy creep up your spine with a sensation of familiarity mingled with kinship.

This family came on a first visit, it was nightmarish and terribly upsetting for us even though, we sailed through the trauma with philosophical composure.

The boy who was just six years was already fixated in his debauched ways. He walked in self-importantly without saying hello. All our entreaties to make him welcome met a brick wall he merely stood pigheadedly staring back at us even after his father nudged him to answer.

The next thing he did was jump on the table, (thankfully he was wise enough not to jump on the glass table) in order to jump on the settee. He leapt from the chair to the dinning section attempting to jump on the chair, missed it and hit the ground!

I was alarmed!

His father rushed to pacify him while we stood watching the drama. He shrugged the father away. This was barely five minutes of stepping into the house. Soon after, he dashed into the bedrooms, opening and slamming doors. Then he went into a room where something caught his fancy, it was a Christmas tree. He began tugging at the branches. I quickly followed behind him to find out what he was at just to find he had yanked off three branches hauling them to the ground just within the period he entered the room.

I dragged him out; he was kicking and hitting out at me to be set free. My patience was dissipating fast giving way to growing bewilderment. Wondering and muttering to myself what breed was this imp from? I locked up the rooms. We were left in the sitting room. Everything he laid his hands on was strewn on the ground after inspection. I was stumped!  The mother just sat down blithe, made little efforts to restrain him. All she uttered was ‘’this boy you have started your wahala again” but the father was apologetic yet he could not restrain him too. He feebly kept corroborating his wife’s statement that the boy was indeed too stubborn. He strews things all over the house all the time!

We looked at him trying so hard to hide our dismay. We were shocked!

We resolutely moved outside to our frontage. It was like unleashing a dog from its cage. He raced from one spot to another; with earsplitting noise, we could not make any meaningful conversation!  The next thing we knew he was peeping through the window of the next-door neighbor, in a split second he sprinted in. The father got up to look out for him but he was restrained by the persuasive words of his wife to let him be since we acknowledged that there were children he could play with over there. I could not give a damn if he walked into a ditch for all I cared! The boy was just a babied brat!

Barely ten minutes of his walking into the next house, the door flung open with the children spilling out, shrieking, yelling, crying, kicking and fighting. He had destroyed toys in their house from the confrontations. He had cockily snatched, perkily stepped and animatedly kicked their toys to ruin. The three little children out of the four in the house swiftly wrestled him to the ground in anger punching and pommelling him. This time the mother had a reaction. I said to myself ‘’ finally”! She sprinted up, racing towards her son yelling that those kids want to maim her child!

When she got to the kids, she yanked her son away and stormed furiously back. She angrily said the toys could be replaced instead of beating up her son. We were forced to walk over to tender our apologies to the family.

We were told that he destroyed those toys purposely when He reached out for the first toy and tried to piece the toy apart to find out what was inside. He pieced the toy and dropped it. He insolently snatched the second toy from the four year old when he would not part with his toy and stepped on the third deliberately. He even overturned their toys and stomped over some. With a stroke of luck, only three were irretrievably damaged! We apologized and took our leave.

It was just about time for them to leave we have had enough! We told them we were going on an outing and we quickly said our goodbyes.

We never ever welcomed them back into our home. Subsequently, people began to avoid them because the son had earned them a reputation. We only met in social gatherings.

The rapscallion kept changing schools and his nannies ran for their lives.

All you hear from his parents are ridiculous words like “he is just too stubborn” “what do I do now”

I see a potential narcissist unleashed on the society by puerile parents who cannot restrain their infantile child!