One morning, Nicholas was on Jeff’s lap – a Daddy-son thing that they do any time of the day.
The doting father wanted to play some classical music on his laptop and have Nicholas listen to it with him. He loves this Utah-based radio station and would play it all day.
What popped up on screen though was not the usual page that Jeff has seen for years.
What he saw were pictures and videos of naked women.
The online radio station – the very station that plays Mozart, Bach and Beethoven – has become a Russian porn site.
Moving as quick as lightning, Jeff covered Nick’s eyes.
Our boy, of course, did not have any idea what was going on so he shoved off Daddy’s hand and whined about his Daddy’s action. It was the same whine when we tell him that time is up in watching Pooh and his friends of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Children are so innocent; that’s why they are entrusted to us, parents and adults. To help them make sense of the world; to guide them about right and wrong (assuming that we know right from wrong). We are expected – and rightfully so – to be their protectors and guardians against different forces of decay that can strike them in just about any form and in any platform.
Nicholas did not have any clue that there was something wrong about that gyrating, naked woman on screen. Well, we don’t even know for sure if he understands the concept of being naked at 19 months. He is a little angel sent on earth to bring joy (and mayhem, hehehe) to me and his father. We love him and his twin sister, Antoinette dearly and we will do everything to protect them.
One of the inspiration behind the birth of this weblog was my desire to cultivate a habit of reading at home.
I cannot count how many times I have came across readings saying that “A successful adult is a child who was raised in a print-rich environment and was raised by parents who read to him/her”. I have repeatedly shared in this site and in other venues that I have the strongest personal advocacy connections with reading, writing and storytelling. These three compose the triumvirate of literacy development, according to yours truly.
I won’t go all perfect and tell you that I don’t falter in reading to my children. There are days that I can’t do it because I was sick, too busy with class, or out travelling (or doing something for myself because I got so fed up with Mommy chores). But… I try hard to be better at it. In the last 10 days, I have been back on track reading Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are and Margaret Wise Brown’s Good Night Moon during “bedtime storytime”.
It has been nothing but a great bedtime habit that we have established now.
I first read Where the Wild Things Are followed by Good Night Moon. The moment I say “Good night noises everywhere”, Nick will flutter his eyelids, stands up to kiss me as I say “good night”, and lays down to cover himself with his blanket.
Toni is different. She screams and cries for a minute or two and then, falls asleep.
Such is the routine.
Early this year, Jeff introduced Pooh to them and they’ve been best friends with him since then. Pooh is real to them and every time they see my netbook, they immediately look for Pooh.
We don’t let them watch Pooh the entire day though.
We don’t let them watch the honey-obsessed bear on their own. We have viewed,- you can say, pre-screened – all the videos in the netbook (1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, 2005’s Hefalump Movie and Hefalump Halloween Movie, 2003’s Piglet’s Big Movie, and 2011’s Winnie the Pooh film) and one of us still watch these videos with them. So if you ask me, I do know all the songs. I sing them in the shower, in the kitchen, and yes, even in my sleep.
This is all fun, yes. However, it is important to note that TVs, computers or any gadget for that matter should not serve as babysitters to our children. They should never take the place of interpersonal interaction and wealth of face-to-face conversation that talking, dialoguing and storytelling can bring into your relationship.
As Jeff noted in his article published yesterday (January 29, 2015) in Cebu Daily News, we can buy all the software filters in the world, but we, as parents and adults, are our children’s best filters. We brought them in this world so let’s do our job in raising them and making them better persons.
Danger comes in many forms – and in this day and age, they don’t just take the form of a punch or a hurtful word.
Danger can come in the form of an online radio station hacked by a Russian porn site.
And when that happens, Pooh won’t be there with a pot of honey to explain that racy image to your child.
