Parenting in the age of cyberbullying

[Music]

i could talk to you about a myriad of

things about

my media career i could talk to you

about like to be on a powerful platform

like radio

or what it’s like to build a business

but instead

this day on this gorgeous day

i decided to talk to you about something

that i’ve been wrestling with for the

past two years

and that is how to love our children

and this has been a question in my life

for the past years because a very

important pivotal moment that took place

and now hindsight when i look back i can

see that there was a cleansing

that was brewing i was tired my days

were long

and they all just flowed one into the

other they all started looking the same

but meanwhile when i looked around i had

built a successful business

i had successfully transitioned my

career from talk radio

to music radio work was good

my youngest child was being as expected

you know

gentlemanly kind boy devoted to family

and friends

and my oldest child had finished high

school she was doing her first year at

university at one of the best

institutions in this country

she was living out of home closer to

school and really exploring and

exploiting life

after school reveling in being a young

adult

and this is the picture of progress that

i had worked very hard for

as a single parent for many years i’d

worked painstakingly hard to get to that

point

but the reality is that i was feeling

anxious

i was emotionally and physically

exhausted

i was detached from the highs and the

lows and i was becoming increasingly

cynical

about life about success about all sorts

of things and it was on

sunday the 22nd of october 2017.

i decided to forego my usual yoga class

and decided to lie

in have a slow start to the day and i

was woken up by the incessant

calls from a friend

and i woke up picked up the phone and

the first thing he said was are you guys

okay

and unknowingly i said yeah we are and

he realized that i had no clue what was

happening

he said you haven’t looked at twitter

have you

and with those words a feeling of dread

came upon me a fear of things

unknown just rushed over my body

and i immediately knew that something

had happened on twitter

that had to do with my oldest child my

daughter

and as i said she was first-year student

enjoying life after high school

they had gone out the night before as a

group of friends to attend a concert of

a music group that they absolutely adore

but in the early hours of the morning

someone unknown to us had tweeted

falsehoods

about the group of girls and

specifically targeted

my daughter and so

in her efforts to disprove these

falsehoods

the situation inadvertently got worse

and it sparked a deluge

of cyberbullying some of the most

the worst things that you could have

said about someone

false tweets were created and were

attributed to her

and i had decided to enter the fray

decided to enter

these feeding waters to defend her

because i was determined that she

wouldn’t drown

alone by the end of the attack by the

end of the cyber bullying

by the end of this piranha-like feeding

frenzy over 40

000 tweets had been posted about her

and i and as i said some of the ugliest

most

meanest things that you could say and i

can i stand here confidently and say

that

the allegations and the forces that were

posted were indeed a lie because a

subsequent investigation

proved them so but what had left was

absolute devastation it was one of the

most painful day

of our lives we supported each other

firmly in the aftermath of

the cyber of the cyber bullying

but beyond that we had to pull apart

find our own healing

and then find a way to come back

together again

what had precipitated after that

was that she started cutting something

she’d never done before

she suffers from post-traumatic stress

disorder

depression she’s had bouts of depression

panic attacks as well as anxiety

we both sought counseling and i’ve since

discovered a deep passion for the

outdoors

for hiking it’s what gives me sanity and

i’ve also discovered the beauty and the

magic

of breath work and through lots of tears

lots of long

deep moments together

we’ve also gotten a sense of how to

relate differently

how to exist and occupy the space that

we share

as family as parent and child

she went on to get professional help as

i was relating and it’s been quite a

journey since then the road to healing

has been very very challenging

and for me it has brought about an

unfolding

as a parent i describe it as an

unfolding because

after all this time the wrestling that

we’ve done

we emerge and we continue to emerge

there are some things that i want to

share with you today that

i look back on over the past years as

profound lessons

that i’ve gotten from this experience

from being

a parent to this particular child

and the first lesson is that our

children

are here to live their lives they’re

here to live

their purpose they’re not a 2.0 version

their lives are not a 2.0 version

of ours they’re not here to live

according to a script

that we craft for them because who are

we

we’re simply here to take care of them

to bring them into this world to take

care of them

long enough make sure they survive long

enough for them to realize

their purpose and their potential

when this incident happened i kicked

into gear as a parent would i was raised

by a single parent who brought us up

on a nurse’s salary she did it with

great focus

she did it with grace but she also did

it with a lot of control

and in raising my own children as a

freelancer

this is a this is an industry that it

has a lot of uncertainty

so in order for you to build a life and

to build a life that works you need a

system

need a tight system and so i raised my

children with a lot of control

and so when the cyber bullying happened

i did what i always do

i come up with a plan i designed a

strategy because i said to her

if you follow this if we do this you

will emerge whole again

on the other side and my frustration

erupted because of course my child would

say no i’m going to do it my own way

she did the counseling she followed

through with that

what i didn’t want for her was for to

return to social media

but instead she did she went back boldly

and bravely

and decided to share her story she

shared images

of the cutting she talked about the bad

days

the hard days when she wrestled with

depression when she was asking herself

deep questions about why

this happened she was very open and i

now look back

and i look at the strategy that i

presented that she rejected

and can see that in it there was a sense

of saying

you should be ashamed of this you should

hold this shame by not returning to the

world

by saying to her stay away i was also

saying that this

is your shame and she went out boldly

and this was an incredible lesson to

live freely

for me when she started her

tertiary education she had decided to go

for a degree that she wasn’t entirely

passionate about but was

an interest but through this process

she has discovered what she’s truly

passionate about

you can imagine growing up as a child in

soweto for me

and growing up under the unjust laws of

apartheid and seeing how it’s suffocated

and smothered

the potential of not just our parents

and their predecessors their hopes and

dreams but i would suffocated ours as

well

i couldn’t finish my degree because we

ran out of money

had to drop out and study later in life

so when your child comes to you

to say that i’m gonna do something else

i’m dropping this degree you can imagine

the rage

and i realized that as parents when our

children do not abide by what we want

we start to withhold the love we close

the taps of love

we silence we ignore we

start to withdraw and withhold

our love from them and that was also a

great lesson

because now i know that by insisting on

our plans and our ambitions for their

lives

we only delay their discovery of their

purpose

we send them on a detour that could

entirely be unnecessary

for their lives

the other lesson that i learned is about

control i think it’s a beautiful design

because a parent and child

are one of that’s it’s the closest

relationship there

is in life in my view

and needing to exercise control over her

decisions

was this challenge that we were now

posed with

and over and above that in the deep and

hard conversations we had it soon became

apparent that it wasn’t just

control that i was exercising but it was

also

a need to appear perfect and

a need to manage fear

and so that’s the beauty of this

intimate relationship

so often as parents we think that we are

the holders of the knowledge

about life and the world but meanwhile

our children can teach us

so much about ourselves they bring into

sharp

focus areas of who we are

that might be limiting that might be

damaging to

us and so having accepted these lessons

from her

i find that i’m like i’m less tightly

wound up

less tightly wound up and i’ve also

discovered that

it’s okay not to have to manage for

every single detail

the parent that i was is that i would

plan i would make sure we execute

i would plan to the degree where i would

want to anticipate how we would

feel down to how we should feel

after we’ve done something it sounds

ridiculous right

and who wants that job who wants that

job ultimately

and for me it was a case of recognizing

that i wasn’t living

fully free so that’s one of the gifts

that it’s given us

as well and it made me realize that

control

is like living in in a golden prison

and it’s freed us of having expectations

of each other that we shouldn’t

necessarily

have for instance now

i judge less about their choices

about their careers about their

interests

i’m not as judgmental about how they

choose to appear

in the world and i just take a step back

to say

this is your life this is your journey

because ultimately their gifts their

journeys and their purpose

are theirs to live out and they might

not even be connected to the families

that they come through

this was my final the one of the lessons

i thought to share today

throughout my career in the media

business

i’ve always been very careful not to be

tabloid fodder

i’ve always been careful not to put a

foot wrong and not be part of the smut

and sensationalism that often drives

the stories that we see in the

pertaining to personalities

in this country and i spent a very long

time trying to avoid

controversy but now i realize that all i

was doing

was making it camp right outside my door

i was making it camp right there day

after day

month after month year after year

what it’s made me realize is that

there are times when we also create

tension

the fact that that which we resist

grows and we inadvertently create

tension

and unintentionally create this monster

and this very controversy that i’d been

avoiding

struck me when it did with the

app with absolute ferocity and it struck

me at my most personal

and my most precious one of my children

and so i’ve learned in life that just go

don’t fight too hard some things

you don’t have to resist because it

doesn’t mean they’re not going to happen

just because you resisted

resist them does not mean they’re not

going to happen and if they do happen so

what

you will deal with them anyway you will

deal with them

so those are the three lessons ladies

and gentlemen but i also want to leave

you with my plus one

and my plus one is that cyber bullying

is devastating it degrades

it humiliates and it slanders

don’t be a part of it because your post

and your words

could be the act that causes someone and

leads

someone to an act of self-harm thank you