Allow Children To Grow Naturally

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I am a staunch advocate of letting children be children, and this ideology comes from my mother, who believes that the best a parent can offer their children is quality education and not indulging them in activities that they are not mature enough to handle.

My daughter has a tablet and an iPad that she uses for educational games, playing the piano, and watching cartoons. Both devices are not connected to the internet
The tab comes with a SIM, but I haven't installed that yet because this stage of her life is not one where she engages in social media activities or starts placing calls without supervision.

I think that before a child should have full access to the internet, they should be at the legal age of 18, and even at that, the parents still need to keep an eye on their social media activities because we see so many young teens engaging in X-rated content on social media. These teens, I'm sure, have a family that I will say must have failed them. So many parents, especially from my part of the world, are always of the opinion that they raised their children righteously until they come across the content such children create and upload online.

Like real life is filled with predators, it's the same way we have them online. Who are your children texting? What are they talking about? What sort of activities are they engaging in on social media? I believe these are pieces of information that every parent needs to be aware of for effective parenting, control, and guidance. Even as an adult, I have my aunts scrutinizing what I post on my social media page since my parents are not active on the internet.

We all know that the internet has greatly improved life by ushering us into the age of technological advancement and innovations. We now have information that is readily accessible and educative materials at our fingertips in just one click. But, despite all these benefits, we still can't turn a blind eye to the dark side of social media, the part of negative influence.

Children, being what they are, are copycats, and they act based on what they see. That's why we are always advised to be careful about what we do in the presence of children. It is the same reason a child will not listen to you if your actions are not commensurate with your words.

I remember the last family get-together that we had at my aunt's house, where we went to celebrate her birthday and anniversary during the festivities. We stayed a couple of weeks, and in those periods, I couldn't help but see the adverse effects of social media play out in my younger cousins. While I turned a blind eye to some, there was one that I couldn't just ignore. We were in the kitchen making dinner when my youngest cousin walked in, putting on his mother's heels and lipstick. While he made fun, his mother and siblings were not pleased seeing him that way, so they asked him to quit the act. This boy refused to listen. Instead, he was proving stubborn.

I left what I was doing and walked up to him, held him, wiped his lips with a paper towel, and pulled the heels off his feet. He cried a lot and even threatened to run away, saying that we hated him. I thought a lot about the situation and wondered what must have influenced him to behave in such a manner. His mother complained that it's a habit he just formed out of nowhere, and of course, as a typical African woman, she said she was praying about it.

On my own, I struggled to figure things out because cross-dressing is almost like a taboo in my part of the world. I wondered how he got the exposure until I saw him on TikTok. I yanked the phone from him to see what he was watching, and I saw it was cross-dressing content. I was speechless, not by the cross-dressing content but by other things that I saw.

This boy was barely a teenager; you could not imagine the things that I saw going through the smartphone that I later got to know was given to him by his mother when she bought a new phone.

At that moment, I couldn't help but wonder if a switch in one's sexuality is really inborn like we've been made to believe or if it's probably just some influence amplified by the internet and social media.