By Femi Aderibigbe

I stand by every word herein. Listen with an open mind!

The beauty of social media is the diversity of our thought processes, which makes for often interesting, sometimes volatile but mostly entertaining and engaging conversations.

I am probably carved from a peculiar, rare, and hardwood tree, which most likely explains my ability to take a position on a topic and own it, regardless of how many people are against or for my viewpoint and how many direct and veiled insults are hurled at me.

On the subject of parenting and the distinction between how we were raised as baby boomers and offsprings of boomers and how to raise millennials in today’s fast-paced information overload world, opinions differ and you know what? That’s OK! We all can’t think the same way.

I have seen lash outs like “those people forming woke on social media”, “I will beat my child to reset his brain, just like my parents did, no matter what anyone says”, “my child will waste 21k dollars and still be breathing?” etc..

I have no problem with being labeled as a person forming woke on Facebook (to what end or to impress who, I’m not sure, but let’s just take it like that, lol!) My question is, after the outrage and the anger and the beatings, what else? What other tools of engagement do you have?

Nigerians “form woke” with “oyinbo” cars, clothes, electronics, mobile devices, fashion accessories, social media platforms, cuisine and more, but when it is time to learn modern ways of parenting too, they suddenly realize how evil “oyinbo” ways are and how the brute force they were raised with is the “best way” in a very different and constantly evolving world.

The major point boomers miss in trying to raise millennials is that while they were a textual generation, these are a visual generation. Texts are in kilobytes and videos are in megabytes and gigabytes.

These kids have more RAM than you do and process information faster. If you can’t keep up and attempt to bully them, they will seek information elsewhere and once they fill their heads with that external information, you have lost them forever!

The parent that paid 21k dollars got most of the sympathy, the boy who’s head they allowed to be filled with imagery of Davido and Naira Marley right under their noses, was framed as the bad guy. If the man was paying attention like he was supposed to, he would have seen his son’s head was in the wrong place a long time ago. Don’t just drop money guys, invest some time and effort too.

21k dollars might be a lot of money to most, but a lot of rich people have spent more than that trying to conceive without success, so it can never be as important as a human being. He should save his frustrations and look for better ways of engagement, but nah, brother man is still boasting up and down and people are screenshotting and justifying it. Sigh…

Ndi “I will beat my child silly”, understand that millennials now form a large percentage of the workforce. Are you going to beat them at work too? They think in audio-visuals, not texts, that’s why the reading culture you were raised on is rapidly decaying, so get to them by creating exciting and positive audios (words) and visuals (actions) before it is too late.

I know I’m looking for attention on Facebook, trying to form woke on Facebook (even though I have had a little fame before social media), but 1million of you can never bully me into silence. If ONE person learns something from this post, then my job is done!

I’m NOT against discipline by any means, in that regard, most of you dey learn work next to me, but I discovered a better way with these unique individuals who have incredibly high cranial capacity but are more prone to negative content through undesirable interactions and that way is constant positive ENGAGEMENT!

Your child is NOT a dullard, their level of brain activity is higher than most of you can comprehend. You just allowed them to imbibe the wrong content and failed in your role as the primary filter and buffer zone in their lives. Now, slap your self instead, yeah, you deserve it!

But hey, don’t mind me, what do I know, right? Keep pouring out your frustrations on those you will pass the baton to somewhere in the nearest future, just understand that Davido, Naira Marley, Porn Hub, Netflix, etc will raise your kids right under your nose, despite your “unspared rods” and frustrated fists.

God bless.

 

Femi Aderibigbe (Kwame) is the CEO of Virtual Media Network LTD, (Orisun TV and Nigezie). He is a seasoned media practitioner, with experience spanning radio, TV, and Digital Terrestrial  Broadcasting.