Need for effective good parental guidance

Parental guidance has been lacking in families with dire consequences. Parents no longer guide their children on which television programmes are suitable for them and which ones are not.

Nowadays, you will find a parent watching an adult film or TV programme with an underage child. You’ll find that such parents have no idea that they are encouraging deviant behaviour among their children.

Visual content sticks in a child’s mind, which makes them to put into practice what they see on TV. They may end up harming themselves and friends and relatives.

Lack of effective parental guidance promotes immorality, crime and deviant behaviour. When a child starts to misbehave and engage in criminal activities, parents begin to blame them and become harsh on them yet they are actually responsible for it.

Parents should become aware of the effects of inadequate parental guidance regarding TV programmes causes to children. There is a need for effective parental guidance so as to protect children against bad influence.

TV stations are doing a good job of informing their viewers on programme ratings, categorising them as general exhibition (GE), parental guidance (PG) or 18 and over. But some people ignore them, instead watching whichever programme pops up. Parents and older relatives of a child should adhere to these ratings.

If we do not teach children at a tender age about the appropriate programmes for a certain age, we will not control them when they get older. We should also embrace guidance on films too.

The film industry has diversified to a huge extent. Some producers make and distribute films that are full of violence, vulgarity, crime, nudity, sexuality and other explicit content. Such films promote violence,immorality and criminal activities.

Most of them have no moral lessons at all. Inasmuch as they offer entertainment, they are not good for children, who cannot distinguish fact from fiction.

Children presume the actions portrayed on TV or in films to be true yet, in real life, they are just the imagination of script writers aiming to make profits.

Children also need to be protected from viewing and listening to musical videos and music, respectively, that contain explicit content. The music industry has ventured more into production of music that is not acceptable by the wider portion of society.

It is almost normal for a child to dance and sing along to an explicit song—often, encouraged by adults, who teach them. That is not good; the children will get lost in immorality at a tender age and, by the time they grow older, be ruined by the consequences.

Western culture has overpowered African traditional forms of entertainment, which didn’t have such bad effects on children. It is not too late to go back to the old ways which promoted good behaviour in society.

Gerald Tomno, Baringo