Insanely trying to raise a kid

While we drive to and from our designated destinations my five year old girl likes to listen to songs. She particularly likes the rap songs. Now I don’t mind her listening to songs I believe children should listen to music all the time. But come to think of it rap songs are hard to digest. While we wait patiently to cross the traffic light the lyrics burst out ‘I want to spank that big fat ass’. One fine day my daughter hummed ‘spank that ass, spank that ass’ and that was a standalone speech, she didn’t say anything further. I wasn’t appalled. I just didn’t know how to react because she has blurted out many other words that I cannot mention here.  

Now, I am not proud of what my daughter blurted out – I am trying. I couldn’t say anything in defense. I waited and I explained to her those words aren’t something she should repeat, not everything we hear has to be repeated. I have also tried erasing or skipping all the rap songs that almost always have profane lyrics. Poor kid she is confused. She is baffled. She now knows that songs aren’t always nice and they are bad too. For the past three months I have set a new rule in the house. The rule is she watch TV only on Saturdays. She asked me this morning if it had to be only Saturday. I reassured her while we were both brushing our teeth; yes it had to be only Saturday. She asked the reason and I didn’t have any better answer but as smart as I am I thought about our load shedding schedule and assured her because we get lights on Saturday.

You can see I am smart. You can also see that I am trying – trying to raise a good kid, who watches TV once a week and who has to read a couple of books in a day but is exposed to profane lyrics a minimum of 6 hours a week. I am not good at calculations but I reason will 6 hours a week of good music with profane lyrics hamper my child’s behavior. Absolutely not. So this morning while I dropped her to school we listened to Sugar by Maroon 5 on repeat. This is now her favorite song but without the profane lyrics – see I am making progress here.

We have all heard of the famous proverb, ‘no parenting is bad, each to its own and mothers know best.’ I don’t know if I know what’s best but what I know is that I hate when teachers lecture parents about good parenting. Earlier this week I attended a teacher parent meeting while my daughter was sitting the entrance test. The parents were asked to introduce themselves and were asked to say one thing their child pleased them. All parents said they were pleased with their children no matter what they did and I couldn’t agree less – they are cute, they ask innocent questions and they try our patience which we never knew existed within us. At the end the teacher read a note from her file stating ‘parents should raise their children in an acceptable environment’. She was kind to elaborate and stated, “We like everything about our children now but we may not like the same things they do when they are adults so their behaviors have to be acceptable. If we don’t correct them now then they will get confused when you correct them later.” Agreed.

What I don’t agree is that teachers’ responsibility isn’t about lecturing parents on how we should raise our children. I would have liked to personally send a note to the teachers and tell them a parent teacher meeting shouldn’t be about parents feeling they are not doing something right – it should all be about how the school can foster a child and what role parents can play strategically. If I had the skills and the patience I would home school my child but what I don’t need now is some teacher telling me how to raise my child.

On the contrary I hadn’t prepared my daughter for an entrance test. I didn’t want her to feel the pressure – I wanted her to be herself. I told her to rock the test just like how we rock to the rap songs. Oops!