From latch-key kids to growing up on a video diet
IN ONE of my columns for the Cape Argus, I pointed out how the holy injunction “Suffer little children to come unto me” (meaning, allow little children to come unto me) had been corrupted by the insertion of a comma after the word “suffer”.
The sentence now reads as a grim truth which is vastly different from the original. In fact, the dream for children fostered by Madiba has become a nightmare. Children are the victims of the world they have inherited from us.
No child asks to be born. No child asks to inherit a world that has been destroyed by greed and a lack of vision.
It is an irony that the child’s first encounter with the world is a sound slap. That the midwife’s smack galvanises the first breath is irrelevant.
The constitution condones that as the only legal act of violence that the newborn suffers.
I am not only referring to sexual or physical abuse or the ravages of neglect. I am also referring to parents who, perhaps unwittingly, expose their children to a life that is not ideal.
Often, the carers’ pressed agenda causes them to substitute material consolations in places where love and caring are required.
We have regressed from latch-key kids to children growing up on a diet of video (remember Beta and VHS?) to cellphones and touchpads.
The world is not only unfriendly through the commission of acts of cruelty, but also by the omission of acts of generosity.
Parents have to find the time to re-establish the bond that seems to be severed with the umbilical cord. Often, both parents need to work to provide the very substitutes I refer to.
The efforts to bridge the hiatus in love reduces to the buying of expensive electronic gizmos that hardly serve as surrogate parents.
The awful realisation that unsavoury material can be accessed through these devices should alert us to the need for guidance and measures of control.
Even Angie’s Parade (read Matric results) requires some measure of counselling and support for students who don’t do too well. These pressure situations often lead to sad loss of life.
When we look at the children and the tragic lack of mentoring and guidance, we should be asking serious questions. The private sector doesn’t buy into the child’s real needs.
The profit motive overrides the need for providing caring facilities. Our newspaper exhorts us to militate against racism and violence towards the vulnerable by wearing orange.
In much the same way, we should encourage carers to use stolen moments – time at the breakfast table, or during the ride to school – to do hands-on guidance. Monitor their use of the social media. Guide them to a state of grace. They are the future.