What do you do when you ask your little girl to sing a number and the first tune that comes to her head is one of those tunes that feature half naked people twerking themselves silly? The shock and shame will be enough to kill you if you were in the company of visitors from church who you have been bragging to about how angelic your little angel is.
A friend of my cousin recently amused us when she told us she asked her daughter to sing during fellowship and all the girl could sing was a hit song from a popular Kenyan boy band. The innocent girl went on and on in full harmony and they were all surprised at her mastery of the lyrics. She did not get one word wrong.
Later on when they had recovered from the laughter, she asked the daughter where she had learnt the song, to which the young one replied, ‘si ni Auntie aliniwekea’. Apparently she had been listening to that song for quite a while until it stuck so hard, it was going to take several hymns to replace it.
Religion notwithstanding, our children are exposed to multiple content at every turn some of which are grossly explicit. From the television, to the radio and to the mobile handsets parents are willingly buying their children nowadays, it is hard to know what your child is taking in.
You may try to create a buffer zone at home but once they step out you lose total control and leave them at the mercy of the instructions you give them not to listen or watch explicit content.
Even the matatus and school buses they ride to school are not spared. A concerned parent had to give strict warning to the driver of a school bus over the music he plays while he takes the kids to school. This was after he noticed his child kept humming to strange tunes the whole evening after school.
On questioning the child and his fellow schoolmates where they heard such music, which featured swear words, they all pointed fingers at the school bus.
Children’s minds are like sponges, they take in everything without necessarily weighing the options of whether it is appropriate or not. Once they take it in repeatedly it will be hard to convince them otherwise.
Parents should be keen on what their children watch and listen to. A child is only as good as what he/she sees and listens to, Garbage In Garbage Out best describes this.
Be sure to explain clearly the reasons why such content is inappropriate that way even when you are away they will know the right thing to do. At the end of the day, we cannot guard them everywhere we go. Sure instructions will help them sieve everything they consume, in a highly technological world where information on everything is available at the touch of a button.