We’ve all heard it echo across the compound house, down the suburban hallway, and straight through the neighborhood: the sharp, piercing voice of a parent laying down the law at the top of their lungs.
In Ghana, shouting and scolding are practically codified as baseline parenting tools. Raise your voice so they respect you. Correct them loudly so they never forget.
But during his interview session on TV3’s The Afternoon Show, Gospel singer Perez Muzik, puts words to a quiet national trauma, stating flatly: “Parents shouting and scolding makes Ghanaians timid.”
We pride ourselves on being warm and fiercely communal. Yet, step into a corporate boardroom, a university lecture hall, or a national stakeholder meeting, and you will notice a striking paradox: brilliant young minds sitting on their hands, terrified to raise their voices, share an innovative idea, or look an authority figure in the eye.
This peculiar hesitation starts at home.
When a child grows up bracing for the next explosive scolding, Perez points out, their brain doesn’t learn accountability; it learns survival. Constant yelling forces a child into a perpetual state of hyper-vigilance. Instead of internalizing why a mistake was wrong, they internalize the terror of getting caught.
Over time, this dynamic chips away at a young person’s self-worth and confidence. They stop experimenting. They stop volunteering answers. They shrink. By the time they transition into adulthood, that conditioned timidity hardens into a reluctance to advocate for themselves, negotiate a fair salary, or challenge broken systems.
We are inadvertently raising generations of adults who are paralyzed by the fear of being too loud or making a mistake, simply because their earliest critics made mistakes feel like cardinal sins. It’s time to unlearn the belief that a child must be terrified of you to respect you.
Challenging this dynamic doesn’t mean throwing discipline out the window. Ghanaian parents want the best for their children in excellence, morality, and resilience. But true strength doesn’t stem from intimidation.
By: Gideon Agyemang
