Dads Baby Sitting With Cellphones

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Professional basketball and football dads live away from their families so that they can earn enough dollars to provide for them: buy Baby Jr. toddler shoes with the name of an Italian designer, although they were manufactured en masse in China. Mummy loves that and shares it with the world on Instagram and Face.

Responsible dads. That’s the right thing to do, but it starts with talking to Baby Jr. not scrolling your phone while he touches your face with his dime-big hands. There was a Toronto Raptors star player whose wife always posted videos of him holding the baby, while looking at his phone. One of the wives of a famous Nigerian lawyer, once posted a video of him on the phone, while their three year-old son looked longingly at his father.

NBA, NFL and MLB players are absentee fathers for a reason. To provide for the family, but there’s no family if they cannot spend an hour with their kids during off-season, or when games are played in their home state. What is so fascinating about your phone that you don’t see the love in your little son or daughter’s eyes? Kids love their parents. They cannot talk yet, but they touch the stumble on your chin and wonder: what the hell is happening here?

Kids might be too young to talk but they can read in between the lines, but not through a cellphone. Women are good in having ‘conversations’ with toddlers and small kids because they are with them most of the time. Mind you, some mothers are phone addicts. Kids can play with a cigarette lighter, burn something and the little fire grows into an inferno, through the roof. The mother is busy on her phone and ear plugs.

Loving the internet more than kids is a bad investment, and we must not blame the government when chickens come home to roost. Listen to the song: Cat’s In The Cradle, by Harry Chapin.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger

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