Author Archives: Monica Nyasimi

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It’s said that whatever you teach your children is what they live to emulate, but how can a child learn if the parents are not close to their children?


A youth living with her nanny since she was 5years old.
Parents are always busy with work and meetings not even trying to know how their children are holding up.

Mostly Kenyan parents a larger number in the city,they are ever busy with work and so they send the children to their Grandparents or even employ a nanny who will stay with them.

Whenever a child is raised with grandparents or even nannies,they will choose what to do an what not to do. If those who are guarding them are so called ‘softies’ the children will grow to be different in character.

Sometimes the parents will start blaming the guardians for not disciplining the children but what they don’t remember is that they are the cause.

While engaging with many youths in Nairobi city, they tend to blame their parents for not showing them the right way.One of the youths in college quoted,”I wish my parents could teach me the right way,wish they told me that the world was never easy,wish they sat at the dinning table at peace and maybe laugh with us.”

Collins Kavete a student at the Nairobi university seemed quite upset with his parents for not being their for him when he needed them most.”My parents are both CEOs in different companies in this city and they only appeared at home ones in a whole month.Whenever I wanted to talk to them they’d promise to talk to me after some several phone calls then I could end up sleeping feeling unwanted.”

“I am talking on behalf of every child who grew up with both parents but we’re never there for them,”said Collins”we never had that chance of living with them for long and even some of us ventured into drug abuse to reduce stress and the depression that was pulling us down each and everytime.

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Everytime I was bullied at school because of my small size, I tried to tell my Dad but all he said was that I was a big man and I should defend myself and then he could go out and leave me stranded and honestly depression is real.I never wanted to involve my nanny in whatever I was going through and so mostly I could take alcohol and release my anger on the walls.

It never helped until I joined campus, here I found a whole group of guys we have gone through the same pain and sharing the stories helped me alot, they really became my family and yes,many of us take drugs to ease the pain we have gone through.”

Parents before anything in your life, please know what your children are going through,it hurts to have parents who only care about their jobs not their children.The Cubs are going through depression and they need to talk to you.

The stories youths have are hurting and they need someone who they trust.

Religion is the most essential thing a parent should teach his son to follow and when they grow up,they won’t depart it. That is what the Bible say, but how many have been brought up in Christianity and yet they have diverted from the right way to a different difficult path.

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First, religion is not just Christianity, for Muslims,Hinduism and others that is still religion but they all have different gods they believe in.

Diverting from the right religion has happened with or without knowledge of the participant. It was ones said, a cult emerged and many were recruited and those who were difficult to recruit they were seduced my many ways, getting free money and even luxury staff.

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During my interview with different campus students, I got shocking information that could shock parents too.

The desire to get money, more money and truly nothing is for free in this life.Many called it Illuminati and others called it free mansion.This religion has swallowed almost half of the youths because of the free money they acquire but they barely know, there’s no free gift.

Joy and Juliana were testifying on how their friends got involved in that cult and they disappeared after sometime.

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“Joining a cult for ladies is for the love of money, good looks,and better life than what they have, “they said, “we are never satisfied with what we are given with our parents and so we decide to go for more than we can afford.

Our friends had the desire for money and that is what they got but little did they know there life was counting on the clock. We have been Christians, prayerful teams and that is what our parents taught us and still it depends with how strong your faith is.

This story might not shock you but for me it did because they said,their lost friends were later found dead in the campus square.

If this is what our desires can lead us into then religion is essential to children as they grow and not just that, give your children what they need,that will do good to them.

By Monica Kemunto

Sounds scary right?Yeah it’s very scary and sad at the same time.Do you ever look at someone’s pretty face but later realize they have cancer.Pretty sad,right?

Cancer they say is hereditary from generation to generation,the researchers have it.

Sometimes when a child in the family is diagnosed with cancer ,it majorly affects the parents and maybe siblings.

Cancer is never an easy journey or a walk on the park to start with.

I was once misdiagnosed with cancer and it was a bombshell to both my parents and I to start with.

All your dreams and shuttered and whatever comes into your mind is all that you did for you to prosper and it hits you that it was all but waste of time and resources.

I didn’t have cancer but for the few days of misdiagnosis, I believed life was nothing but passing smoke. You will never desire to see the future not want to know if the present.

Many have lost hope due to this killer disease that has no discrimination for the poor or rich, for the thin or fat, for the young and old. It is not just about the medication,it’s all about you and your future and whatever that awaits you in life.

For anyone who knows there is cancer in their bloodline it’s good to be tested earlier to avoid inconveniencing your body.

By MONICA KEMUNTO

Social media is a wide term that means a variety of platforms in the internet and this internet has swallowed almost 95% of the total world population who afford smartphones.

It would be wise if I said, most families are breaking apart because of the influence of social media and whatever it holds in it.

Basing on the facts , you will come across different families where siblings fight because of not wanting to commit their precious time to normal house chores they always feel burdened. They tend to know the breaking news, trending news and all about ‘memes’ they call them.

Children barely sleep at night and according to my research, most of this youths they sleep closer to the house sockets, why? It’s all about the phones.Waking up becomes a problem and even causing conflict between parents and their very own children.

Parents aren’t left behind either in this social media scandal that is swallowing everyone.A parent barely knows his/her children than the nanny who is always there for them, why? Social media is there all time job,they don’t have time to bond in the house anymore,no more family meeting can be held without spotting a parent holding his/her phone.

The family bond is breaking, and there’s minimal reaction to this situation because everyone is held victim of circumstance.The only thing a parent can provide right now is just money nothing more.That is why depression and mental illness is increasing amongst the youths and children in the current era.

Social media is doing more harm than good to families and nobody is seeing this.Conflicts, divorce, and many more other random complications in the family are majorly brought about by social media.

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Wake up and open your eyes ,the current generation is breaking and nobody can help them.

By Monica Kemunto

By Monica Kemunto.

In our podcast we’re majorly focusing on family and partly divorce but street children are either affected by divorce of parents or death of parents.

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It’s quite painful to see a child on the streets begging for money at least to feed their stomach for the day.These street children don’t have anywhere to go or live apart from the streets,under the bridges or even near river banks.

Trinah a street girl has been in the streets since the death of her parents.It was never easy to feed her younger brother and sister all alone with no one to help them through the hardship.

She says during our interview, “My father left us to look for greener pastures and my mother couldn’t cook food for us every day,I was always hungry that’s why I decided to run away to the nearest town. Later I learnt that my dad had died in an accident that was fatal and my mother had died from a fatal disease and so I decided to go get my siblings and survive in the streets.My relatives couldn’t help due to their poor state.

The police have always been brutal to us, they think we’re thieves but we’re just beggers.”

Looking at a bigger perspective, these children are really going through tough times. First they don’t have parents to take care of them, second they have to survive in the brutal hands of the police in patrol.

Beating them has Never been a solution at all,they should put themselves in those children’s shoes and see how painful it’s to face the cruel part of the work and it’s brutal phase.

I tried to talk to one of the police officers and he was insisting on the negative side of these children and not the positive side.They steal to feed the younger ones that are in those bridges they’re forbidden from living there.The cold weather,heavy downpour,hunger and brutality from the police is the worst the children can handle at their tender age.

Street children have more than being helped.They need shelter, love peace and food.

Families are believed to have a strong disciplinary system from the father and not the mother, but what about those mothers who raised us with no jokes around, chasing you with a big cane to help you shape your character.Those are the mothers who are proud of their children.

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They say, spare the rod spoil the child which is true to some point until some parents started to misuse this say by pouring their anger on their children.Do you know what really happens when you beat your son or daughter until they bleed? That is a police case straight away.

We don’t deny a parent from disciplining their children but what if you hit and kill? Whose fault would that be?

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But still I support the discipline our parents gave us, it was heavy but they disciplined you with caution not to harm you but to correct you. Talk of the current era, the current generation of ‘don’t you hit my lovely angel’ even when they have messed up completely.

Parents are digging there own graves, by this I mean, why would you say that in front of your child and yet you know they have messed.

One thing all of us should understand, the human brain is very clever,a child will always learn how you react to whatever they do and so they do it deliberately to scoop up your anger to the surface and there they will know how bad you can react to various situations that find them on the wrong side.

Your son or daughter will live to know even when they’re in a mess, they won’t undergo any discipline case.Later in life,they will commit the worst of the worst and you won’t be able to rectify them and that will be either the end of you or the end of that ‘angel’ that just turned to be the devil.

Basically discipline is necessary but to a certain level of it, not to hurt your child but to rectify them.

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By MONICA KEMUNTO.

In a family we may or may not have a child who is silent and never wants to talk to anyone except that one person who makes him/her smile.

These children with the silence treatment like character, sometimes they are autistic and if not treated right,they will loose control or even commit suicide at some point.

The child may not learn fast but eventually they need someone to talk to and guide them in the right way possible and mostly, whatever you teach them,that is what they apply,so it’s better to teach them the moral ways than the wrong ways.

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Many parents don’t know what there children are and they don’t know how to treat them right. You have to understand what that child wants.Whenever this child says no, it’s a no they’ll never change their mind to say yes unless you take your time to understand what they want.

The worst part of autistic kids is that, they don’t like anyone shouting at them or even blaming them for something worse.They panic so easily and loose control immediately,they develop fear that makes them run away from you eventually.

I have encountered more than one child in different families with autism but the parents don’t know what it’s like to handle these children.

Children with autism tend to be afraid of trying something new, they’re afraid of someone who shouts loudly,they only love silent places and mostly they can hurt themselves whenever they’re wronged.

Junior,a village boy from a certain part of Africa was my first African child to encounter who had autism and the parents knew nothing of his condition and so they could say he was a mad boy. They didn’t know Junior needed someone who could at least talk to him, understand him better.

I took my time in the village observing this boy’s likes and dislikes and later came up with my assumption.Junior only loved his brother and hated his parents so much for calling him a mad kid Everytime they introduced him to someone.He loved reading alot whenever he was at his calm mode and could beat himself up whenever his father scolded him for not being an upright boy.

His attitude towards his father was drastically dropping and deeply this whole thing was becoming a mess.The father didn’t know his son needed a loving person around him.So whenever he scolded junior,the boy could hold onto his toy bear so tightly.

I had to talk to the nearest person around,a counselor who could help both the boy and the parents.

It’s fair enough to understand signs of an autistic child before changing them to mad people.Their silence matters to them alot.

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By Monica Kemunto