Home » “As a family, you must ensure you have value system”-Mrs. Folashade Femi-Lawal

“As a family, you must ensure you have value system”-Mrs. Folashade Femi-Lawal

by Adenike Akindude

Dailyfamily.ng had an exclusive interview with Mrs. Folashade Femi-Lawal, the head of Card Business at First Bank, Nigeria.

“As a family, you must ensure you have value system”-Mrs. Folashade Femi-Lawal.dailyfamily.ng

Mrs Folashade Femi-Lawal

Mrs Folashade Femi-Lawal spoke in this interview about the importance of families having a value system and upholding it. She also advised career women on how to balance their career with parenting and family life.

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Can we meet you?

My name is Folashade Femi-Lawal, I head card business and look after 10.5 million cards for First Bank and its subsidiaries.

When did you start your career?

I started this career 1995 and I was just 25 now I am 47. I started with Standard Trust Bank in 1995 until I started having my children and I felt it was tough then I moved over to Econet as a pioneer staff, I was the pioneer, head of credit control for Econet and I went through all the metamorphosis until it became Zain then I left to work for a Financial private network and now I am back to banking since 2012 with First Bank and I have been loving it.

Tell us about your Husband

I am married to the best man in the world, Babafemi Lawal, a man who adores me and truly loves me. Our marriage will be 20 years come October next year which means we have been married for 19 years.

Her children

I have four children with a set of twins that are nine; I have a nineteen year old and thirteen. By the way, all my children are November born.

How did you plan that?

It was not planned. When God takes you through trials and afflictions, he takes you back to a good place where you become the envy of others but they don’t know your story they only see the glory.

“One thing as a family is that you must ensure you have value system”-Mrs. Folashade Femi-Lawal.dailyfamily.ng

Mrs Folashade Femi-Lawal with her husband, Mr Babafemi Lawal and their children

How do you cope with parenting and career?

I am glad to have a supportive husband and understanding children. The price of working so hard and being in this kind of middle management position in a bank is that the children end up sleeping late because we always make sure we have family time.

So, I can do online mentoring, online parenting, when they return from school, I accept their calls and hear all the gist about what happened maybe highlights and in the midst of what we are talking about, you pick their silence, unspoken messages that you need to work on.

I’m an involved parent and it comes with a price I must tell you; when you are driving into the house totally knocked out from work pressure, you always have to ask God for an extra grace to listen. There is tendency for you to start screaming (why are you guys still awake at 9pm) but of course my husband always remind me that they haven’t seen you since morning so if you are giving First Bank almost 18 hours of the day, you should be able to give them some time. So, they troop into our room and you hear chit chats of course you know I have twin girls, nine year old and a thirteen year old boy and everybody has their levels of complaints and information.

The great thing is sending our last three children to Discovery House Montessori School, Lekki phase one owned by Mrs. Bola Kalejaiye has really helped us. It was good to start there with them 12 years ago. The children are taught to do things themselves and that really removed the burden of getting a lesson teacher. The last time we hired a lesson teacher was in year 2010 when our first son was in another school but the moment he moved to a similar environment we didn’t need a lesson teacher.

The fact that our children are self-direct made it easy and then our children are spaced, there are five years gap between the first and the second, four between the second and the third and nine years between the first and the set of twins and that helped them to assist each other with homework. That does not take the role of parents, we are one firm parent, and our children are well-behaved.

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We thank God because we won’t say the glory should be given to us, of course, there is a lot of commitment, a lot of hard work in the sense that you get back home late and you will feel like you should tolerate some excesses, no, my husband won’t allow that. We give them chores at their levels; for example, my three daughters have been washing their own undies since they were four.

Can you share your experience about employing nannies/house maids?

Nannies are necessary evils and you wished you can do without them but you can’t with the kind of job that I do. I have a year that I hired like 30 within a year and three within a month.

One thing as a family is that you must ensure you have value system that you uphold. Anyone: family, nanny, help, support, friends that will not uphold that value system do not compromise your standard, be ready to give them the gift of No. No matter how good a nanny is, if all we see you do is to bring down the value system of our children, I cannot for the sake of convenience, let go of the value system that we have built over the years with our children. I will rather suffer and let my back break, after spending 10 hours on stilettoes at work, to remove the shoes and roll up my shirts and start cooking than have a nasty and disrespectful nanny; I will send you packing. It’s sometimes painful but if you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.

I thank God because we see that in the lives of our children. My first son is studying abroad and the testimonials are amazing. The teachers, strangers and expatriates wrote testimonials that he is so well brought-up, we give God that glory. If we had allowed irresponsible nannies with no value systems to raise them, we would be blamed for it.

Parents need to pay attention, yes you are tired from work but you have a responsibility to God and to the nation in raising God-fearing children. Nine years ago, we came up with the idea that irrespective of whether the nannies want to pray or not, our children should gather together and pray at 7am by themselves. So, among them we have the one that will the one that will read the bible, the one that  will explain what they had read, the one that will coordinate prayers, singing and all. Whether we are at home or not you hear them doing their devotion without us even when we are at home, we can now join them. You won’t see them saying we are waiting for mummy and daddy because we want them to be self-sufficient so that when I and my husband are long gone at very good old age, their lives are not upside down. We taught and are still teaching our children to be self-dependent and that was also emphasized by discovery house Montessori where they are taught to be self-direct, to be able to discover things themselves and that has helped.

Today, my last three children have a foundation called ‘Privileges of the Poor’; they are raising funds for child hawkers on Ajah axis to send back to school. We have been able to raise about #250, 000 by simply going to family and friends’ house to collect old newspapers and going to the market to hawk it. We have been to two radio stations and people are wondering: “how will you think of this at age 8, age 7, that other people need to back in school and you have to fund it.”

That is the reward of raising godly children who are not so into themselves. My 13-year-old has had an apron since he was 9, he cooks, and he was that said I should to stop buying already cut and processed chips that he would be peeling it himself, which I felt I was tired and wanted something fast, He said mummy don’t worry the natural ones are better, healthier I will be peeling them.

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For example, in my house, a new cook, a new nanny know that you will have to refer to Tamilore because he have his standard and won’t compromise, he will tell you this is how we do it in the house. They will call themselves and pray without the nanny, nannies are not doing it, they ignore them. They have learnt to enjoy one another’s company, they are self-driven. I can use Skype to solve naughty math questions while on the way home. We talk, we bond, and you know they say love for children is time.

We’ve learnt to give our offices commitment, I am a dedicated, result-oriented staff of First Bank but at the same token, I am a passionate mum, I also lead a group of about 4,000 women to fast and pray every Wednesday on Facebook called ‘Praying Moms’ that is because we want to build homes based on Christ Jesus and that is the example of what a home, a family is supposed to be. You cannot give 100 percent of your time at work and your children are not well brought up, you are a total failure.

I will encourage every other mother, father, aspiring mothers to make up their minds that they must make it work, it must be done as a personal sacrifice. You will rather be sleeping than to tell your child I will supervise your sweeping my room, my second son clean my entire room every Saturday for #250 which I save for him so that he would appreciate money and now with the project they have, they can see that to raise #1000, you have to sell as many old newspapers as possible so they will appreciate when we are paying their school fees and they are bent on helping a lot of this child hawkers, it is because they are raised to appreciate other children that are in need, that is the example God Himself is teaching us. If we start this in a little corner of our nation, Nigeria will be the best.

What is your advice for Career women on balancing family, parenting and their jobs?

They need a strong support system; I have been blessed with some fantastic nannies. I have nannies that looked after the twins when they were babies, they are married now and they still come to assist. Be ready to commit to your value system; do not spare anything to uphold your value system.

Yes, love your job but your family must come first. You must do all you can to keep the unity of your family and to be the friend of your children, to be there for them. There is a research in Harvard which says children of working moms turn out best because they have to make do with whatever that is available. As it is love your job, have a plan B, there is recession and we are getting out of it but who knows what tomorrow will bring, that is why we are taught to make investment for the future but love your family and put a structure in place to work, for example, I cannot work with a nanny that cannot send text messages because I’m always in meetings, how many calls am I going to make.  Be ready to hire and fire when you don’t see the values that you desire.

Don’t be tired of hard work; my father says hard work never kills and that is the truth, pay day is just around the corner.

You can also read this: Parenting advice for career women from Pastor Mrs Olamide Timi David

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