I thought that I was done with articles about children and what we expose them to all in the name of trying to be cool parents, parents that know what’s up, that want to show that they have the money to provide everything for their children and also want their kids to go show off in school amongst their friends that their parents can afford to buy just about everything for them, especially latest technology. But I have children and I owe it to people to understand that there are something’s that we are doing wrong. When we say that the younger generations are coming up with all sorts of things and we are worried about what life holds for us because they are the future generation, but if we do not start to model their minds, their thought processes, the way they think to the right direction then we have not been able to achieve anything, we haven’t put them in the right state of mind, we haven’t shown that they have to go through the right path.
I’m a bit worried because everything that is evil, everything
that is sinful, everything that is pornographic, everything that is
inappropriate is free right now as opposed to before where you had to sign up
and become a member of something on the internet for you to have access to
things or you have to pay to have access to things or where you have to put
your birth date to prove that you are of age. Gone are the days were they used
to do that to ensure that children are not exposed to things, gone are the days
when parents are very strict in their houses where once it’s 9 o’clock you have
to be in bed and get ready for school the next day, on school nights you can
only watch TV for one hour just so that your brain is fresh and there’s a bit
of entertainment in it that would boost creativity, you can only watch TV during
the weekends. Gone are those days were we
monitor everything our children watch, were we take out time to buy the DVD’s
that are appropriate for them, watch it first and make sure that the content is
good enough, we are too busy to do that. Gone are the days were we would sit
with them and know what their teachers are teaching them and know exactly what
it is that they know. Sometimes we come home and our children say things or
sing things and we are wondering where did you learn this from, where did you
hear this from. I know that we can’t be with them 24/7 but the truth is there
is an extent to which we can try to make some sacrifices to pay attention to
your children who are more important than any other thing. Gone are the days
were you sit with them and know what they watch so that you know the names of
these people, the things that they do because now we find that their role
models who are on different children’s channels that we get from cable stations
have started kissing, dressing very skimpy and doing all sorts of things and
our young children just feel that that’s the way to go because they love these
people. They are not aware that their role models are growing up and most of
the episodes of the shows that they love and they are watching now are things
that were shot 4 or 5 years ago so now when they see these their role models
doing all sorts of things they think it’s still ok, after all my role model is
a young child like I am but that not true.
We have to be able to take care of our children and monitor what they do
especially now that most schools give our children the types of homework that
even you as a parent cannot understand or you don’t even know. As a parent I
find myself asking my sisters, asking my friends, going to the internet before
I am able to answer questions because
sometimes you wonder if they haven’t taught the children these things how else
do they expect them to do it if not that they expect their parents to
participate and spend time doing their school work with them so that they can
help them do the research but most parents that are busy who have to go to work
so that they can afford the schools that they send their children to might not
have the time in the world to sit down and start to do research so most of the
time we don’t make it easier for ourselves because most of the parents I know
don’t employ nannies that are educated and most of the time you cannot even
find educated people who want to be nannies so you find out that most of the
people that you have are not educated and that’s why they are doing the kind of
work that they do. So most parents take the easy way out by giving their children
access to the internet so they can find the answers to their assignment, so
that even when you come back from work you are not saddled with all those
questions you might not be able to answer. Sometime you’re tired, its either
you want to cook, make phone calls or try to rest and that is the wrongest time
to pull out your laptop to try and go on the internet to find out things for
your child. Only a few people who have strength and are extremely determined to
actually sacrifice that time and monitor what their children are doing
,especially on the net.
I am insisting on writing another article about
this internet thing because I have done different experiments and different
researches and something shocked me.
A friend of mine was talking to me about something that she saw on her daughter’s laptop and I asked to see. Now, I’m sure most of you know that you can check the history of all the sites that have been visited on a laptop, when I opened the history on the child’s laptop I actually saw like 3 or 4 different pornography sites, from soft porn to hard core porn. I was so shocked and embarrassed on her behalf, I asked how she got access to these sites, did she just type sex videos or pornography, what could have come up in her head for her to go into those sites and she said ‘Look, Stella, you are the one that knows how to handle young girls why don’t you call her and talk to her. I don’t have to be there, if I’m there she probably wouldn’t want to talk, she will probably relate with you better. Can you help me find out what happened?’ So I sat with her daughter, tried to make her very comfortable and I had a conversation with her. I said to her ‘you are not a bad person; the fact that you’ve seen these things doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. Truth is I want to help you so I want to know how these things came in. If you like to see sites like this it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person it just means that you have an issue that we need to deal with and I am willing to help you deal with it but if you didn’t go to those sites intentionally I need to know how they came up on your laptop’ and she said to me ‘Aunty, I was just innocently playing a dress up game, most of the time the models come up only in their underwear and you have to dress them up and I realized that when you dress them up and you move on to a model on another page, other sites start to pop up so from dressing games, you see kissing games and dating games, when you click it there are cartoon people that you have to make kiss when no one is looking’ from what she explained I gathered that other things are linked to these games that you didn’t plan to do, so all you really have to do is just click.
It is very difficult to tell a child that when you are doing this no matter what pops up don’t look into it, even as adults when you are going through a website you are in search of something, other things would pop up that are related to the thing you are searching for and when you look at the related materials you may just want to know more since you are on the internet already, it’s just one click of the button and it can take you to places you never expected to be and the unfortunate thing is that other tings pop up that look more interesting and out of curiosity you just click and at that point you are gone, it is something that pulls your mind inwards, it is something that’s so attractive that you are just in another world especially when you are alone, no supervision, nobody to monitor what you are doing. The internet just has a way of pulling you into different worlds that would shock you. Even when you do not like such things, even when you don’t want to be a part of such things or you don’t want to practice such things the fact still remains that you are exposed to those things.
A friend of mine was talking to me about something that she saw on her daughter’s laptop and I asked to see. Now, I’m sure most of you know that you can check the history of all the sites that have been visited on a laptop, when I opened the history on the child’s laptop I actually saw like 3 or 4 different pornography sites, from soft porn to hard core porn. I was so shocked and embarrassed on her behalf, I asked how she got access to these sites, did she just type sex videos or pornography, what could have come up in her head for her to go into those sites and she said ‘Look, Stella, you are the one that knows how to handle young girls why don’t you call her and talk to her. I don’t have to be there, if I’m there she probably wouldn’t want to talk, she will probably relate with you better. Can you help me find out what happened?’ So I sat with her daughter, tried to make her very comfortable and I had a conversation with her. I said to her ‘you are not a bad person; the fact that you’ve seen these things doesn’t mean that you are a bad person. Truth is I want to help you so I want to know how these things came in. If you like to see sites like this it doesn’t mean that you are a bad person it just means that you have an issue that we need to deal with and I am willing to help you deal with it but if you didn’t go to those sites intentionally I need to know how they came up on your laptop’ and she said to me ‘Aunty, I was just innocently playing a dress up game, most of the time the models come up only in their underwear and you have to dress them up and I realized that when you dress them up and you move on to a model on another page, other sites start to pop up so from dressing games, you see kissing games and dating games, when you click it there are cartoon people that you have to make kiss when no one is looking’ from what she explained I gathered that other things are linked to these games that you didn’t plan to do, so all you really have to do is just click.
It is very difficult to tell a child that when you are doing this no matter what pops up don’t look into it, even as adults when you are going through a website you are in search of something, other things would pop up that are related to the thing you are searching for and when you look at the related materials you may just want to know more since you are on the internet already, it’s just one click of the button and it can take you to places you never expected to be and the unfortunate thing is that other tings pop up that look more interesting and out of curiosity you just click and at that point you are gone, it is something that pulls your mind inwards, it is something that’s so attractive that you are just in another world especially when you are alone, no supervision, nobody to monitor what you are doing. The internet just has a way of pulling you into different worlds that would shock you. Even when you do not like such things, even when you don’t want to be a part of such things or you don’t want to practice such things the fact still remains that you are exposed to those things.
TO BE CONTINUED ...