jaga jaga anak kita

I wacthed a movie entitled “ The Changelin” – a strue story happened in 1920s in LA. The story is about a single mother who got to work to keep survive. One weekend, she got to attend to her office and leave her 11 years old son all alone at home, as always. She came back in the evening just to found his son was missing. The months ahead were very painful. With all the politics and the difilculties… btw, to cut the long story short, she never found her son again.

That’s brought my mind back to the world that we’re living today. The world where the good and the bad people are living together. The world where there’s only a thin line between predator and MANGSA. The only thing that make the difference is OPPURTUNITY..as long as we don’t give them opportunity, insyaAllah, we’ll be safe. But it’s not easy, the life today is demanding, especially in the cities. Where the husband and wife got to go to work and leave their kids at home, most of the time with stranger. That is the choice that we made. Yes, we do have other choices but it seems too complicated, sometime we made them complicated, just because we want to keep up with the demand in life. The mother can simply decided to quick the job and stay at home. But then, they cannot cacth-up with the demand..well, that what they think, tha is what we think. The fact is, life goes on with or without that job. And if the single-worker-husband think he cannot meet the demand, perhaps he can decide to relocate their family to a lesser demanding place, but again, its not easy. Those need CHANGE, the five letter words that not many people willing to do. It always good if we can go back to the life when most of the mother stay at home look after their kids, do the house chores and the husband get from work and meet their kids and wife together at home in the evening. yes, they don’t go to KFC or any decent restaurant, but they do eat the food they like to eat and sometime they can afford to eat the food they wanted to eat.

I was born and brought up in the village, and both my parent are working at that time. As far as I can remember my parents got to leave me once every week, but I was a boy at that time, not a little toddler who’re so vulnerable to predator. And it’s in a village where everybody knows each other. (Now, we don’t even know who’s living infront of our house). And my parent got to work not because they want to buy big house or car..let alone big car, they work because they need to feed me and send me to school and true enough, my mother quit working the moment I am graduated from university – no car, no big houses, just a graduated son !

But today, we work and leave the kids at home because of many reasons, yes, to feed the kids and give them good education is may be the main reason, but that’s not about all. We need a decent house, a decent car – all thanks to banking system that allows us to “buy” something that we cannot afford. And to do that, both husband and wife got to work.

I myself is a father of two. My wife is working. And yes, we got to leave our kids at home. Luckily we live near our parents house who can look after the maid who look after our kids. But many got no choice but to leave their kids with maid and only maid, maid that we never know their background except as what was written on their cvs. I am not comfortable with that and I think all parents not comfortable with that, but still, that’s the choice that we chose. Because we think that’s the only choice. Which is WRONG.

And we put our kids at risk. Allah sent us many stories, for us to learn the lesson. For a record, ??? kids missing last year..most of them remain missing. Some were unavoidable, but some were due to us, the parents – we gave predator too much opportunity !

Revisit our life, prioritise our needs and perhaps re-strategize our future. CHANGE..the man and woman biggest hurdle. Kids are our biggest test..and they are here for reason.

Zd-BSB