Keep your children home 

So, are there parents still doing this sleepover stuff these days, with the way our world is rolling?

I pray one day you will not kick yourself in the shins for having failed your children in some way, when you hear the sordid stories.

My friend’s university-going daughter recently shared how she slept over at her best friend’s home and woke up in the middle of the night to see her friend’s brother in the bedroom where she had slept, performing what looked like satanic rituals all over the space.

He did not touch her, and he did not realise she was watching him. When he was done, he walked out of the room, leaving the young woman perplexed over what had just happened and what it all meant.

She went home and told her mother she finally understood why her parents had always been adamantly against sleepovers, even when she was younger.

I know it looks stylish and even classy to hop onto all these band-wagons imported from the West into our culture, but could you at least make the experiments on your own life, and not the children over whom you hold a steward’s role? How will you ever explain some things to them later?

My answer to a request to attend slumber parties, sleepovers and sijui what else, was always standard: “I know your best friend well, but I don’t know her parents, brothers, sisters, house help, etc. So… not happening!”

Families in this part of the world can be into some weird stuff, cultures, beliefs and doctrines. Beliefs that are totally alien to what you are and want for your own children.

In the name of being modern and ‘compliant’ with the times, what exactly are you exposing your children to? Does it make you a good parent if you give your child what she demands – a sleepover – and her friend’s rapist brother assaults her?

I recently read on social media about a young, Kenyan boy who was repeatedly raped by his best friend’s teenage brother during sleepovers and the mother only got to know when her son became incontinent. These are different times; babysit your own children.

malita@observer.ug