Opuofoni Selekumo is popularly known as Uncle Sele. He is a Values and Character Coach for Children and a Parenting Coach.
He is also an Associate Lecturer with the Institute of Student Affairs Management ( An institute for Family Protection) where he lectures on Child Development. His purpose and assignment are to build and frame the minds of the upcoming generation to make the right decisions based on Values.
He is the Founder of an online school for Values, Character and Child Mentoring called Trees and Pillars.
According to Opuofoni Selekumo, how well you raise your child will determine whether you are a good parent.
Parenting is a daily task that requires your complete support in order for your child to advance appropriately in every way.
Which is your child—a normal or abnormal one?
Mr Selekumo said, “over a period of time mentoring and training kids, we found out that we tend to have children engage in a lot of vices, so I started asking myself; who is training these kids? and why does it look as if we are having a lot of children being abnormal and abnormal things being the vices?
I’ve had boys tell me they want to rape someone’s child; they want to watch porn. Why is it looking like these vices people should run away from are becoming the new normal in Nigeria? And that’s how I came about the phrase which is your child?”
In order to further emphasize his point, he used the cliché “it takes a village to raise a child,” which prompted him to question the parents or other external parents, “Are we normal? because we also influence children.”
Mr Selekumo additionally stated that a child’s attitude is not appropriately influenced by the parents’ correct mindset.
He said, “if you relate with a lot of children out there, you’ll realize that their mindsets are wrong, we’re not transferring a lot of good values, what they are seeing from us as mentors and models are wrong things, which means that we are building a society that’s an upcoming generation that will engage in a lot of vices that will make life uncomfortable for us.”
The host of the program, Mazino, added to the discussion by stating that although we parents were conditioned as children and may have committed some mistakes we wouldn’t like to see in our children, we unconsciously still behave in the same manner.
How do I as a parent now recondition my mind as it is?
Training a child is more than just the parents, as the coach referred to as “the AJO of parenting.” He said following the phrase he stated that Society contributes to how Society is functioning in terms of character. “We need to begin to change the narrative now.”
See the video below for more!
