I see little children in the streets of our residential areas as well as main roads so many times. Sometimes it is one little kid, other times it is a several of them. What stands out during such occasions is that there is no adult in sight directly responsible for these kids at this point.
I remember the other day my blood ran cold when I saw a very little girl drop by Chinyonga in Blantyre and headed towards the short-cut leading to Chichiri alone. She was putting on a Blantyre Baptist Academy uniform. It shocked me that this little girl was left to take such a route, which is sometimes deserted and considered dangerous, alone.
As much as it is good to teach children to be independent and responsible from a young age, it is also important to acknowledge that we live in a dangerous world. We live in a world where little children need to be closely safe-guarded and monitored at all cost, especially the little ones in junior primary and nursery.
Apart from the physical dangers that little children can encounter when left unmonitored in the streets in our residential areas and on their way to and from school, little children are also prone to other less tangible dangers in such instances. There are so many things little children can get exposed to at the times when no responsible adult is around to guide and guard them.
I have heard many times people lament about some habits and words that their children have picked up and they have no idea where these came from. Little children develop violent behaviours and foul languages which sometimes are obviously not picked from their classrooms.
Little children can be quite observant and easily pick up new words and habits. They roam the streets in the neighbourhoods and watch what other people are doing. Unlike older children and adults, little children have little capacity to filter what is wrong or right or what they should pick up or stay away from.
In other extreme instances, little children develop parallel relationships with other people of which their parents are not aware of. While one is at work, their children are in the street hanging out with someone the parent has no idea about. Sometimes little children have another house that they go spend their afternoons where someone else is at liberty to feed and show your children whatever they feel like.
Another problem with little children forming parallel relationships that parents are not aware of is that these relationships can sometimes come in painful conflict with the relationship parents have with their children. Of course relationships that little children have cannot be restricted to the parents but it is important that parents should be aware of the presence of other people in their little children’s lives and the explicit roles these people play.
For instance, your child goes to spend an afternoon at a house with a young girl she befriended. You, as a parent, have not audited this relationship and are simply not aware of it. This girl loves watching TV and watches whatever she pleases without censoring. On the other hand, as a parent you do not allow your children to watch TV anyhow and whatever the children watch is censored.
What happens here is that your little child is exposed to material you as a parent would rather the child remained unexposed to. Secondly, the child compares what the other person is letting them do with what you let them do, and this becomes a problem as the other person is seen to be “nice” to them while the parent turns into the “villain”. Next thing the little child becomes defiant towards the parents because someone else offers what the parents don’t offer, its typical human nature.
On the other hand, the danger of leaving little children unsupervised is the issue of diseases that the children can be exposed to because of the unguraded environments the might end up in, the unchecked food they might ingest and the chemicals they might be exposed to. Sometimes children have allergies other people are not aware of and it becomes a danger when they are exposed to these allergy triggers.
I think it is important to keep little children on a very tight leash until maybe they get to upper primary school. Once a child is in standard five and above, I think the leash can be loosened to a certain extent. Otherwise, little children are sensitive creatures and have to be handled with the utmost care.
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