At the rate that Filipino
parents are going rabid over the Internet seemed to warrant parenthood seminar
for them. Fire were not yet fanned out on a viral photo about a child being treated like a dog and here comes another
similar situation. This time, one adult was apparently teaching a toddler to
smoke. Last May 26, 2015, a certain
Ehrds dela Cruz posted on Facebook a photo of a young woman holding a toddler
sucking a cigarette. Based on the posted
image, there were two instances that this little girl was photographed smoking
cigarettes.
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| Image from Inquirer.net |
The image was part of
personal album by dela Cruz aptly titled “Yosi Fah More” which was created on
February 15 of this year. Now, there is
such a thing as cute moments and this situation could hardly be categorized as
one. First, smoking is dangerous for
both adult and young ones, all the more it is very dangerous if you involve toddlers as they have a fragile state of health.
Second, teaching children vices at a very tender age is a working of
someone who has a sick mind. Again, no parents
are happy to know that their children are smoking and even drinking. As much as possible, even smokers themselves would advise and even castigate children if they caught them smoking.
What does this image tell DSWD? It is high time that they should
create a working body which is tasked to monitor and find pictures with
Filipino parents abusing their children.
There might be thousands out there waiting to be discovered and God
knows what kind of abuses that are soon to be found. Second, DSWD will have to call for a multi-sectoral approach to handle social network abuses. The task is too heavy for one agency to
handle and there are serious issues involved such as right to privacy, freedom
of speech, and cultural or social implications, among many others.
It is not enough for DSWD
to handle issues after the social network storm exists but should be before the parents can even think of
ways or situations where and when they think that their personal moment with
their children is cute, funny, humorous, and endearing for them but not to
others. As the old saying goes, “an
ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” It is very dangerous for the Philippine society
to tolerate social network abuse involving children and tolerate parents with
sick minds.
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