I read with interest the letter from Glenvista resident, Karin Swanepoel. In her letter, Ms Swanepoel responds to my original opinion piece about the incident when children took poisonous sweets from a stranger. As a result, those unfortunate children became ill after ingesting the sweets.
The letter talks about children taking drugs despite the warning of their parents not to do so. My original letter referred to the sweets that the children had taken from a stranger. I certainly hope that the same children have been educated about drugs and to never take them!
Ms Swanepoel actually reinforces my point when she questions children “who end up taking [the sweets] from so-called friends at school” – those friends also have parents and again, I take issue with the parenting skills and suitability of the parents in question. How would these children obtain these dangerous sweets in the first place?
In addition, the importance of explaining to our children about these dangers, is magnified exactly because our children spend more time at school than they do at home. It’s up to us as parents, to teach our children that it’s ‘cool’ or ‘dope’ to not do drugs – and that drugs are simply not on!
At no stage have I judged anyone. What I’m saying is that parenting isn’t a job that can be outsourced, or done via ‘remote control’. We need to bring back old-fashioned tried-and-tested parenting that has been shown to work, generation after generation in the past. When writing my original letter and this response, I’m presuming that our children have full-time working parents. In today’s difficulty economic times, it’s very rare that a child will be fortunate enough to have a stay-at-home parent.
All these factors confirm exactly how important it is, to inculcate in our children the potential dangers and situations they may be confronted with and how they should deal with these situations. Surely this is being a good parent?
Manny de Freitas MP
Also Read:
Poisoned sweets eaten: An example of bad modern parents
How do working parents monitor kids at school, Manny?
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