‘Soft copy’ children

Qaphelani Mabhikwa, Successful solutions
A friend was recently lamenting the lethargy and delinquency in our children today. He was saying they are tired, all that occupies them is technology and they do nothing else except technology. They are so soft they can hardly do anything for themselves but are given to a lot of misdemeanor. Immediately I said to him, it’s not all of them we still have angels in our children but true the majority are “soft copy children”. In basic computer language, a soft copy is a document saved on a computer. It is the electronic version of a document, which can be opened and edited using a software programme. The term “soft copy” is often used in contrast to hard copy, which is the printed version of a document.

We now have electronic versions of children. They don’t want to be bothered. Anything that is manual or hard is interfering with their rights as children. Technology has killed our children. The maid has killed our children. We, the parents have also killed our children. We have those children that are “blessed” whose laundry is done by the maid or a washing machine. Their bedroom is cleaned by the maid, who can go as far as making their bed, all they do is sleep in that bedroom. They cannot clean it or make their bed. When some of us parents see this, we think our children are comfortable. No, they are as good as dead, they are walking graves.

Our children must be socialised to appreciate that the bedroom is theirs and the responsibility to keep it clean lies squarely on their shoulders. We walk into their bedroom and it is as good as a pig sty, there is no semblance of order. There are food left overs, books, shoes and underwear on the bed. Windows are closed and an unfamiliar smell exudes from the room. Some clothes are hanging precariously by the window.

At times the pig sty is kept locked to keep you out of it. Some of us were unfortunate or maybe fortunate that we didn’t have our own bedrooms when we grew up. We grew up in the high-density areas where most houses had two bedrooms, the parents’ bedroom and the other one for the rest. This spare bedroom we called ‘sipheya.” In the majority of cases, it is girls who were privileged to use this other bedroom due to issues of priority on privacy and we had to graduate to sleep in the spare bedroom when our sisters got married and left home. I won’t bother you with details of where and how we slept.

The garden is a no-go area for them, they were not made for the garden. You, the parents can do the garden and water it ,while they sleep or watch TV. They will participate only in the eating of the vegetables. At times the fault is with us the parents, we don’t get them to do the garden with us. We love them so much that we think the garden will harass them.

Some of us even have a gardener but we have more than two grown up children in the family who know nothing about gardening. They cannot even water the flowers that decorate the yard and when their soft copy friends visit them, the girls are doing photo shoots by those flowers they think grew naturally. This is very sad.

The mothers cook when they have grown up girls in the house. In some households it’s the maid who cooks. The grown-up girls in the house can neither cook nor do dishes. The parents have hired labour, the maid does all the work and the children are lazing around. I have seen sixteen-year olds who cannot cook a meal for the family. It’s not surprising that some young marriages have suffered because the young man suddenly realises that he has married a beautiful girl who can’t cook, a wife who can neither do laundry nor iron clothes, a wife who cannot clean the house.

The washing machine maybe available but how many people can afford it and technology has not finalised things like ironing of clothes. I had a colleague (he is late, MHDSRIEP) who used to go and have takeaways for meals when the maid was away. He said he could hardly eat what his wife and daughters prepared. This is very unhealthy and when tomorrow the maid has taken over the husband, we blame the ancestors for not protecting the marriage. When the maid takes leave, it’s so evident that she is away as the house is turned upside down from the kitchen to the bathrooms.

The son(s) will watch their fathers clean the car over the weekend. The last time they cleaned the car the father paid them and today he has no money to pay them and he washes the car while they watch. They will come to play music in the car when the poor fellow has finished cleaning the car. When they are asked to clean, they think it’s not fair to give them such manual labour and they do a very shoddy job. When dad complains they remind him that they can’t do it as thoroughly as it is done at the car wash because they have no hoover.

These soft copy children don’t want to learn. You have to force them to learn. When you have day scholars, they are hardly on their study table in the evening. Instead they are on technology. If at all they are on the study table not much is happening in terms of school work. They are so comfortable education doesn’t mean much to them, us their parents have made it in life and they are okay.

Our children can spend the whole day reading over five hundred messages on WhatsApp but they struggle to finish an ‘O’ level literature set book under two hundred pages. School consultation is for the strong not for those of a nervous disposition. At times you may think the teachers are exaggerating and they don’t like your child. Far from it, the teachers have no single reason to dislike your child.

This is when teachers will tell you how they are struggling with your beloved child and you begin to ask yourself many questions and wondering why you are paying school fees. The teachers will tell you of homework not done at all, some exercise books not submitted for marking and notes being not done. In some cases, you will be told of absenteeism but you don’t remember the child missing school.

These are extreme cases of when they leave home in uniform but they don’t get to school, they disappear into thin air and return home in the evening very jovial and you think they were enjoying their school. As for the boarders, you relax at home thinking all is well with the child at school until you receive a phone call from school requesting you to come and collect your child as the school cannot coexist with them.

They have beaten other children, the boy has gone out of bounds and drank opaque beer and smoked, they are busy with relationships at school, the boy has sneaked into the girl’s dormitory or the girl into the boy’s dormitory, they have bunked church, insulted teachers, smuggled a phone into the hostel, the list in endless.

The neighbours have not been spared by the soft copy children. The boy goes to the neighbours does some deals with the children there and at the end of the day he has taken their phones or extorted money from them. The neighbours come to complain and you know nothing about all these so-called deals. He is wearing clothes you have not bought and you are told they belong to a friend. Next day the parents of the friend come looking for the clothes.

I will not paint all of them with the same brush. We have in some cases, excellent children who were made in heaven.

Traditionally we don’t brag about good children for fear of the unknown. I was highlighting what I think most of us parents are going through. The question that comes to mind is, yes, we have the soft copy children, what is the remedy?

Let’s reserve that for the next article.