Airbag: FAP

(For All Parents)

By Nyakio Munyinyi

 Friends 2.  When your child has more friends of the opposite sex.

 What do you do? You have a girl, a gorgeous daughter. She doesn’t like girls. Thinks they are silly, stupid, mindless and boring.... So what do you do if your daughter won't talk to the neighbours daughters and play pretend ‘house and cook’ games with dolls? Always ends up climbing trees and coming home with tadpoles in a old Toss plastic tub, fished from a stinky drainpipe? Force her to throw away her tads? What do we do with girls who have different interests...Not let them cheer with their Dads when ManU and Chelsea are battling it out on NTV?? Force her to keep you and the house help company in a hot kitchen while cutting cabbage? Dress them up in frilly dresses and go online desperately seeking a day all-girls school?

Or your son. Shunning boys and preferring to play with the girls. Braiding his sisters hair brushing your daughter’s hair every evening while listening to Britney Spears, or trying on moms high-heel pumps while ignoring Dad’s shoes? Playing pretend and applying black nail-polish and preferring Salons instead of Barbershops to get his hair cut and (much much later....) going to Salons to get his hair braided into cornrows?

When do you begin to panic?

AIRBAG 1: Never, never panic. (1) because cornrows on  young jamaas are the cutest thing ever (I think) but also because (2) panic is a fight or flee response that often immobilizes the victim like a rabbit caught in the glare of a car’s headlights. You’re not a rabbit and you’re not in the middle of a highway. What you have is sense, sensibility, wisdom and your God. Never panic because: Children smell fear from a hundred miles away and what you fear, they will head for..I mean they will go right for it, just try it... Tell your child, right now, DON’T DO ______ ! and watch while they plot together how to do it...whatever it is..  (I keep telling my kids after meals not to wash the dishes!!!) LOL.. Sadly though, in today’s society we have far too many single moms and the kids are confused. Mom’s are confused. Papa’s are confused. And those that aren’t raising their children in single households are keeping AWAY from the singles, and keeping their children away as well. So we end up with a confused society... And this just isn’t us kyuks or kaos or lunje’s or amerucans....a 28 year old KBA (Kenyan-Born Asian) man told me recently that his father keeps apologising to him, “I don’t know how to be a dad, son, because I didn’t have a dad” – apparently the dad took off and returned when said ‘boy’ was in his twenties which was a bit late, but what I am trying to get into here is this, we are breeding a society of misfits where no-one knows what dad’s and mom’s roles are. In the documentary “Cripes and Bloods: Gangs in LA” a gang-member remarked that he didn’t know how it was to BE A MAN until he was 36 and it took ANOTHER man to PHYSICALLY hold his hand and show him what a father’s love was

...So meanwhile, we improvise. Then when I don’t agree with YOUR improvisation, we argue. For this article’s sake, let’s not argue about why dad’s are taking off and leaving women to raise little men and women... let’s concentrate on AIRBAG 1: why your son wants to act like a girl and doesn’t want to emulate his father’s personality, and why your daughter thinks it’s cool being a dude.  Watch out for danger signals FROM ourselves, from me and you, especially since we are ALL spending too much time away from our children as it is, or throwing them into boarding schools when the traffic gets too much.

We take shortcuts. For example,

1.      Never take your sons to a hair salon to get their hair cut. Take them to a barbershop. Let a man shave and cut their hair....Take his sisters to a salon and leave them there while you take your son to the Barbershop.

2.      Be firm and sensitive in your language and  in behavioural tendencies: eg, do not repudiate or differentiate household tasks, eg  only girls cook and clean the house, while only boys watch soccer or clean the car or take out the garbage.... (Top chefs are men, very few are women).

3.      Mind your language: Nailpolish is for the girls, your mom, your sisters: underwear is for boys, panties for girls. If for some reason you think otherwise, then keep it in the family... if you can. Like I really think a stud earring on a male is about the cutest thing ever especially if said young boy has cornrows... cutest!!! but, I was warned that I shall be Banned, Banned with a capital B from my church if I dared to pierce my sons ear.. he’s 9 and totally handsome and I so wanted to get him an earring..... but apart from me and in effect, my son being banned from church; that same young man would never let anyone braid his hair... or even think of entering a salon... why? Because that is what he has been taught for 9 years!! So... no studs on my son...sigh!

Praise all work done well. God praises us, we should praise our children. But note, whatever  your child does, AIRBAG 2: negate none. Whether it’s school work or a task or a gifting which comes from God. Stuff that leaks from a parents mouth like ‘you draw like a girl’ or ‘only wimps read novels’ said (often thoughtlessly) to a boy is utterly de-moralizing and that parent should be made to swallow Omo or Sunlight or the new Aeriel germ killing laundry powder..  What if your son really does like drawing or reading Jane Austen novels and cannot get away from it...if drawing or reading is the place where his soul meets his spirit?? Our Young men should be allowed to write poetry, sing and be emotional. Where would we be without Shakespeare, today?? Without Nonini and Redsan? Without Them Mushrooms and Kamero? The Bible itself tells us that the age where young men will prophesy and dream visions is still ahead of us. BTW, the bible was written by men, David was a poet, and think for a while, who wrote The Songs of Solomon?? A man or a woman? So Love the totality of your child, gifts &all, including friends. If we critisize our children the scars go so deep we create maimed children. I don’t say may maim, I say WILL maim.. in his tiny developing 4 or 5 year-old mind, if you (parent) think and speak aloud and condemn your child, that he has 1 or 2 feminine attributes.... what is wrong with adding a third or fourth?? Hmm??...KM: Kenyan mentality: ‘if the wife is going scream at me for taking one beer, si I just take a crate and land home kesho? AtaDo?’ KCM: Kenyan-Child mentality: ‘If God is going to send me to Hell for one sin, si I just break all the commandments... ama??’ And going on and on and on and harping to your children all the different tasks that we imagine are for girls and boys... well.. maim: to  wound, injure, hurt, disfigure... his psyche, his soul, her spirit, her vibe.

There’s a song entitled “I wanna be like you” in the movie Lion King. My daughter Noni named her little sister Nala after a character in the movie.... (so my daughter is a baby lion..growwwl.), anyway, in this song, ‘I wanna be like you’ the little lion Simba wants to grow up and be like his..... papa lion... and our children are all like that. If not then something is wrong, re-read AIRBAG1.  If your son or daughter is growing up and making more friends of the opposite sex.... or has habits characteristic to the OS, then AIRBAG 3: take a good long hard look at yourself. I did, and it made me understand why my older daughter ended up in a High School where the girls wore trousers and she was the happiest girl in the world..(I think I have um... like 2 skirts?) If you can be honest to, and understand yourself, then you will understand why your child does what he does.

AIRBAG 4: Never vent your anger out on your child at what you perceive as different behaviour. Today I took a walk up the hill with my daughter to the neighbours shamba. It’s been raining and the weather gets a wee-bit chilly in the morning, but as the sun rises it gets humid making it unpleasantly hot so we were covered in perspiration (we girls perspire, we don’t sweat..) by the time we had walked all the way up that hill. And just for the simple reason that I had spotted a BLACK lamb amidst the baby lambs there last week and I wanted to show Nala what a black sheep really was!! What do you think a Black Sheep is??? Anyway, we gazed in amazement at the littlest sweetest cuddliest baby lamb that was black all over. Do you know you can't dye the wool of a black sheep into any other colour? But then, a black coat made from the wool of a black sheep will never fade...Hmmm...

So, your child. Black sheep. Stands out from the crowd. Original. Unique. Different. The girl grows up to be a pilot and brings home a dozen boyfriends. They are ... friends. Just not girlfriends.  And the boy who loves to cook you breakfast and his nyama choma tastes way better than the stuff at your ‘local’ and this young man ends up being a Top Chef in some swank international chain restaurant minting money.... Who brings home so many girlfriends you wonder if you should start a harem (joke) or who has taste and design and will tell you what shoes to wear with which skirt and top and which colour goes with what.  Many international fashion designers are men, and for your info, I hardly wear clothes designed by women... (women don’t design clothes to flatter women)... so, if your son today told you, you Dad, who is a Corporate Shark, a chumaad Engineer, a Lecturer in KU, a macho man, a man who plays Rugby or Football and can open a soda bottle with his eyelid... your 8 year old son confesses, “Dad, I wanna go to to Fashion School and cut materials and design dresses.....”

 The best thing about Black Lambs is that when they grow up, you know that they can really take care of themselves. Because of being different all their lives they have developed very strong shock absorbers.. AIRBAG 4: Don’t ridicule your child’s different-sex friends or talents. Ever. I said this before, I’ll say it again. It’s the best way to isolate your child and make them fall into the wrong deep-end, drowning and preferring to die a watery death rather than asking us for help... would you ask your friend for help if they had ridiculed you and gossiped about your latest trial&error scheme or sold the story to the Nation Newspapers?? No way!!! You’d feel like a moron!!  We keep forgetting that this is the only time our children will quite honestly be able to try out their schemes, grow their minds, stretch out their limits with new untried  and untested ideas. Given, some ‘new’ plots may not be what you want them to try out, (and this is where you Pray to God on behalf of your child) but on the other hand, what is childhood if you can't get to try stuff and get burnt in the process? Then you learn.... A child who falls off a Climbing Frame and breaks his forearm will heal faster than you. If I find you (mom) climbing a tree today I’ll ask you wazzup and speed-dial my psychiatrist (for you). If I find your daughter climbing the tree I’ll probably sit down, watch or take pictures of her until she decides it’s time to come back down. Don’t stand at the bottom of that tree and holler your head off, CHILD CLIMB OFF THAT TREE and in the same way don’t holler at them to make the friends that you think are appropriate.

As a kid I hung-out full time with my budda. Later on, his friends used to tell me they didn’t know he had a son.. anyway, hanging out with him meant hanging out with older males. I never hung-out in kitchens, or in maternity wings..or whatever it is my mom did coz I didn’t spend time with her.. I hung out in golf-clubs, in libraries, in dark snooker rooms  and darker golf-pubs.. rich men’s pubs where after a game of golf it’s off to the showers and dab-on the cologne. I watched powerful men comfortable with influential men telling the most awful Top Gear jokes.. but, I also hung out with mechs, dirty mechs and car garages and car engines, with and in cars: I used to spend time in boardrooms doing my homework while daddy cleared up his desk: my dad taught me how to drive at 12... with one hand tucked under my thigh so I could steer with just one arm..(bila power-steering..) I am a total bi-product of my upraising. I drive like a madman and I can only blame my dad.....

So I ask you to think back and think, really think of your earliest memories and whom you emulated, mom, dad, big sis, uncle, aunt, grand-father... Then look forward and at your child. Remember always, children are a Gift, a Blessing from God, and when we pray concerning our children, God sends out those Angels quicker than lightening.