With the recent incidents related to paedophilia, child marriage and child abuse, the stress levels of parents must have increased tenfold. Parenthood is certainly becoming more and more challenging these days!
Maryam Aziz, a mother of two young boys, discovered that kids in primary school these days aren’t as innocent as one may think. She shared her worrying discovery in a post after one of her sisters, told her about it.
Apparently, her sister found drawings, allegedly done by a boy in her class, depicting explicit and highly disturbing images and doodles on her daughter’s colouring book. Both her daughter and the boy are only eight years old. It really looks inappropriate!
As a mother herself, this incident has affected Maryam severely, because she is afraid that her children might be dealing with bad influences without her knowledge. “We often do not know what is being discussed by our children with their friends in school and what are they watching on their phones even though we try our best to monitor them at home,” she said.
“A knife has a lot of benefits but if misused, it can hurt people,” she added, to clarify that we should not blame anyone, but should focus on taking preventative steps instead. She said, “Parents should focus on the children, and be aware of their preferences. Go through their school books and reading material, monitor what they watch on TV and online, as well as know who are their friends. Communicate with them to know about what they are doing when parents are not around.”
On top of that, good religious teachings and age-appropriate sex education is important to ensure that children will know what is right or wrong.
Syed Azmi stated in his post regarding the issue,
“This is surprisingly not surprising. Teachers in school alone cannot handle this. Parents clearly need to be involved.”
He further added that, in order to handle such matters, the teacher should contact the parents discreetly, because if the matter is discussed publicly in school, things may get worse as the child might rebel even more.
“The words written in the book only proved that it has been in their heads for a long time already. They might not think that this is offensive and wrong because to them it is funny. This is just a manifestation of something that has started way earlier,” he elaborated.
The post by Maryam has received a lot of feedback from the public. Some of them agreed with the fact that parents should stop blaming schools and instead be actively involved in monitoring and controlling what their children are exposed to.
Others suggested that they should limit the age where kids can use electronic devices or parents should set up parental control restrictions on platforms like YouTube and other social media channels.
What are your thoughts and suggestions about this incident? Share with us so that we can create a safer environment for our children.
Also read: Study: Sexual Abuse Cases Of 20,000 M’sian Children Were Hidden By BN Govt For 10 Years