The children we are losing: How a society that fears discomfort is rising a generation unprepared for life
The Mt Kenya Times 
Mr. Ireri Nyagah one of the Naivasha leaders during one of the victims’ funeral services in Naivasha
By Mr. Fredrick Kipchumba Chelimo PWD
Email: fkipchelimo@yahoo.com
There are tragedies that break the hearts, those that expose the truths, those that leave us grieving and those that leave us questioning about everything we thought we understood about ourselves. From time to time, a nation encounters events so painful that they cease to belong to the families affected and instead become moral moments – moments that compel collective reflection. They force society to confront not only what happened, but what conditions allowed it to become imaginable.
Kenya has stood before such moments with unsettling frequency. School dormitories consumed in flames, students appearing before courts, teachers injured while trying to restore order, schools closing indefinitely, and parents receiving calls they never imagined they would receive. Children carrying wounds – physical, emotional, psychological – long before adulthood has even introduced itself.
And then came the tragedy that unsettled the conscience of an entire nation. At Utumishi Girls Academy in Gilgil, Nakuru County, what should have been an ordinary night inside a boarding school ended in unbearable loss. Young girls who had gone to bed expecting lessons the following day never returned home. Sixteen lives were lost, many others sustained injuries and across homes villages and communities, grief travelled faster than explanation.
No official report, no investigation and no public statement can fully account for that silence that follows such loss. Sixteen unfinished stories, sixteen empty chairs, sixteen names that could have become professionals, inventors, leaders, families and memory. No civilized society should speak such numbers with familiarity. Yet as painful as the deaths are, they leave behind questions that extend beyond investigations, accountability and institutional review.
What happened to our children? Why are our schools increasingly carrying emotional burdens they were never designed to bear? Why are ordinary frustrations escalating into extra-ordinary acts of destruction? Why do some children appear increasingly unable to tolerate disappointment, correction, delay or authority? These questions are uncomfortable because they resist easy blame. It is tempting to point at children, teachers, social media, modern parenting, and emerging technologies.
But children do not emerge from nowhere, they are formed, observed into adulthood and observe values before they articulate them. They become fluent in what they repeatedly experience. And perhaps one of the most uncomfortable realities of our time, is that while we have become more sophisticated in raising successful children, we may be becoming less deliberate in raising resilient human beings.
Across many homesteads today, love increasingly expresses itself through protection. Parents want their children to avoid the hardships they themselves endured. The want them to suffer less, work less, feel less disappointment, and suspending natural human instinct. The protection has become overprotection, support become substitution, care become rescue and children are defended before they reflect. They are comforted before they take responsibility, and excused before they apologize.
Every inconvenience is removed, obstacles negotiated, , every discomfort softened and quietly, often without realizing it, adults begin communicating a dangerous message: life should never feel difficult, while life has never promised comfort. Life asks people to wait, to lose, to be corrected, to try again, to co-exist with others, to carry disappointments without collapsing and to hear “no” without interpreting rejection. It also encourages that we encounter authority without experiencing humiliation, fail without self-destruction.
These capacities are not inherited, they are cultivated and when they are not cultivated, ordinary experiences can begin to feel unbearable. The poor grade becomes rejection, correction becomes disrespect, rules become oppression, delay becomes injustice, disagreement becomes conflict and frustration becomes rage. This is not because children are becoming less intelligent, but because emotional endurance cannot be downloaded, purchased or inherited. It must be formed.
Teachers across many schools increasingly describe a generation carrying remarkable strengths and difficult vulnerabilities at the same time. Students who are articulate but emotionally exhausted, connected yet lonely, confident, yet deeply fragile and ambitious yet overwhelmed by setbacks. Students who possess unprecedented access to information but limited opportunities to develop patience, self-regulation and internal discipline. This is not crisis of intelligence but crisis of information.
Homes alone cannot manage and schools cannot become substitute parents. Schools however remain among society’s most important institutions for shaping human beings. Where homes weaken and institutions become overstretched, children often grow in knowledge but remain underdeveloped in character and this is where the danger begins. In unattended conversations, emotional absence, in homes where everyone is connected but nobody is listening, in schools where performance is measured and well-being is neglected, and communities where achievements are celebrated while character is outsourced.
One day society wakes up to tragedy and asks how things reached here. The answer is rarely one event. It is a result of many neglected moments, missed opportunities, and abdicated responsibilities. The solution is not punishment alone; children need more than freedom. They require formation, parents who are warm enough to care and courageous enough to establish boundaries, ready to participate in family life and carry responsibilities.
Teachers must be empowered to guide fairly and firmly, schools must strengthen guiding and counselling, mentorship, life skills, conflict resolution and students’ well-being. Government must treat child development and school safety as strategic national priority. Communities must rebuild mentorship and society must stop measuring success only by grades, income and achievement while neglecting the architecture of character. Education is civilization reproducing itself.
Children who learn responsibility become adults who contribute, child who learn restrain protects others, children who learn empathy preserve dignity and children who learn resilience survive difficulties without destroying what belongs to everyone. The future of our schools will therefore be secured by stronger homes, healthier institutions, present parenting and children who know both freedom and responsibility. Children who understand that strength is not found in rebellion but in character.
The biggest questions persistently remain. If our children are becoming increasingly unable to carry disappointment, what have they been watching us models? If schools are becoming places of distress instead of formation, what have we neglected while celebrating success? if children are speaking loudly through behaviour, what conversation have we failed to hear? If teachers no longer feel empowered to guide and parents no longer feel obligated to shape, who exactly is raising our children?
And when history eventually asks what kind of adults we were while our children searched for guidance, structure and meaning- what answer will we leave behind?
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