Help them decompress

If your father is a thug, young man, you have no excuse of being the pussy in your family that wants to preach the word of god. If your mother makes a living shaking her moneymaker some place near Mtwapa, young man, wiggle it till the randy Germans make it rain. That, good people, is the sum and substance of being led by example. In Swahili, I believe, it is restated as mtoto wa nyoka ni nyoka. And it is utter horseshit.

There was two-week period recently when about a thousand of Kenya's parents lived a nightmare. Their sprogs had gotten themselves in a bit of a pickle with the odious forces of law and order, carousing, merrymaking, fornicating and intoxicating with a licentiousness that stirred even Kenya's blase news-media to reporting the events as news. I think it was a nightmare for the parents because it was broadcast for all the world to see, not because their kids were in the middle of Caligulan excesses. Few "modern" parents give two shits that their kids carouse, merrymake, fornicate and intoxicate; indeed, many parents actively encourage these things on their teen and pre-teen munsters.

Oh, don't you dare deny it! I have seen you with my naked eyes dragging you impressionable sprogs to restaurants that seem to serve very little food, encourage the consumption of copious quantities of intoxicating libations, and are patronised by the most hedonistically unrestrained members of the fat wallet classes you can find. No...no...the playpens with the bouncy castles and the disinterested bar-nannies do not count as places for nurturing the "spirit of play" in your little ones.

I am not a prude. Far from it. But I cannot for the life of me understand why people are freaking out over what are the modern equivalent of high jinks by our children. The pressure we put them under is immense. They must be perfect at all time. Their perfection must surpass the perfection we have lied to them that we had. They must reach Jesus levels of perfection. Whether it is in school, out in the field of play, the accents they adopt, the cloths they must keep clean and unruffled, the TV shows they must watch and enjoy, the novels they must read, the popularity they must calculate among their peers, the innate shit they must know better than anyone else...the pressure is enormous.

Basement-bars where sex, loud music, drugs and alcohol can be had far from the judgmental eyes of parents, teachers, older siblings, pastors and goody-tow-shoes friends are their pressure release-valves. So a few of them impregnate a few of their friends. So what? Teen pregnancies are as old as the bible. So a few of them spread among each other diseases that are best left unmentioned. So what? STDs and STIs are as old as sex. Don't you dare use the idiot-phrase, "In my day..." because this is your day now and these are your children today.

I am not going to tell you not to demand perfection of the fruit of your loins. I will not even tell you not to lie to them about how perfect you were, back in the day. If that's what floats your boat, so be it. But you really must find ways for these children to decompress that reduce the potential for harm significantly. That pressure will one day kill more of them than we are prepared to cope with. Help them decompress safely or be prepared for basement-bars of carousing, merrymaking, fornication and intoxication.