I am sometimes disheartened by the way African parents discipline their children. I don’t know whether the problem would be that mothers are always fatigued and in bad mood because the many problems; say having many poorly-spaced children to look after on top of many domestic responsibilities. But we need to raise our children in a friendly manner. Adults should know that children are understanding and if any thing, have a better listening ability than most adults. The only problem is that parents take children to be fools that they cannot understand anything without forcing it into their little mind. From experience, children can listen and do exactly as you either do or say depending on how you communicate to them. Children need patience and understanding from adults especially because they take their time to study and learn new things, words used to describe what one wants and the facial expression while talking to them. They hate harsh language, congested sentences and changing face while talking to them otherwise they are good listeners. What adults do not know is the fact that when you batter a child, you cause it to lose focus and attention to what you are saying and instead get more confused, destructive and annoying. We need to take time to study our children, how they respond to certain voices and actions we make before punishing them with strokes of cane. Kicukiro