Meet history teacher who has authored five books on parenting

Lydia Ngwiri displays some of the books she has authored on parenting. (Kamau Maichuhie, Standard)

When Lydia Ngwiri embarked on her teaching career 31 years ago, she never dreamt of ever becoming a counselling psychologist or a writer.

Her only objective and aspiration then was to settle down in her new job and grow in the teaching career, which she had so much passion for.

However, as she settled in her new job, the History and Government teacher at Kiambu High School realised there was more to the career than just teaching.

Soon, students with pressing personal problems and issues started trooping to her for guidance and counseling.

However, there was a problem. She felt helpless since she did not know how to handle them as she lacked formal training in counselling.

As a result, the teacher decided to go back to school to do a Higher National Diploma in Guidance and Counselling before enrolling at Kenyatta University for a Master of Education in Counseling. She also has Bachelor of Education from the same university.

And now as a qualified counselling psychologist, she became more helpful to her students.

Trains teachers

She also became instrumental in setting up guidance and counseling departments in various schools, where she also trains teachers on how to run them.

As a result of her interaction with students, Mrs Ngwiri says she realised that they were undergoing the challenges they were seeking help for due to poor parenting.

From that realisation and coupled with the knowledge and skills she had acquired in the course of her counselling career, she decided to write a book on good parenting.

And in 2008, she published her first book Powerful Parenting. The book educates parents on to deal with certain issues, including house helps, loss and trauma in the family, drug abuse, media (both conventional and new media), parenting styles and why modern parents have challenges in raising their children.

In the same year, she published her second book, Wonderful Parenting, which expounds on foundation steps towards building a good character.

The book enlightens parents on how to bring up children aged below 10. It deals with how children can be helped to develop self-respect, issues with their sexuality, how to go about child abuse and how to discipline children.

Mrs Ngwiri’s third book Challenging Parenting mostly addresses parents with adolescent children.

It advises parents on how to deal with adolescent rebellion, challenges facing adolescents today, and their relations with the opposite sex and academics.

“The book basically deals with problems currently being experienced in homes. The adolescents normally react to problems at home. Nobody was trained to make mistakes but in bringing up children, we make mistakes which end up haunting us,” says Mrs Ngwiri.

Her fourth book Road to Maturity, which is earmarked for parents with children in Standard Six onwards, talks about changes that they undergo through adolescence.

It also talks about sex addiction among those in upper primary and secondary school as well as study skills and examination techniques.

Ngwiri is currently working on her fifth book on how to strengthen guidance and counselling in schools through student-based family unit and peer counsellors clubs.

Strengthening counselling

“The new book is aimed at helping the Ministry of Education to strengthen guidance and counselling in secondary schools by coming up with guidelines on how to go about it,” she says.

She is writing the book in conjunction with Teresia Biu, also a secondary school teacher and a member of Peer Counselors Association and Prof Catherine Gachutha, the director of Kenya Institute of Business and Counselling.

Mrs Ngwiri says from her experience in counselling students, she has found out that the problems being experienced by students in schools and children in general emanate from homes.

“Many parents are very ignorant. They have no idea what is going on with their children. It is for this reason that I decided to pen several books so as to reach as many parents as possible with a view of preventing such problems from affecting our children,” she says.

She says the biggest challenge facing children today is having busy parents who have no time for them.