Parents should create social media groups to help each other at such a time

There is an informal saying that Ugandan social media moves on too fast, and indeed it is true. Each day there is just a new topic trending and like Ugandan weather, it changes instantly and another takes the trends.

In most, if not all the cases, the trends are taken over by generally “not important things”, basically gossip, and most sensational stuff.

At a time when schools are resuming following a two-year dormancy, it is important that we parents gather somewhere and help each other handle a few things here and there in detail without simple distractions.

Of course, it is hard to achieve a specific intended one-way motive posts in groups created by Ugandans. You create a group to solicit funding for your wedding ceremony and someone hijacks it to advertise black market yaka units, data bundles, techno, and infinix phones or at the very ‘best’ it becomes a forwarding and dumping ground for archaic thread jokes.

However, what we can try to suggest now is that parents all over, find ways to be supported or find ways to support each other through focussed social media groups, because it is long since we all fell behind due to the impact of COVID-19.

Pockets are dry for some; others are overflowing with different colors of legal tender. Some have children who have lost siblings, while others have welcome triplets. Some have lost their family’s breadwinner, while some have just opened a whole bakery. Can the different colors form one people?

What is the possibility that these groups can come together and advise each other of where to buy the many requirements or even share with others regarding the needs of their children?

A family that has no ability to shuttle their kids anymore from Kira to Hill Side should not get support from a parent who bought an Elgrand to shuttle one tiny kid.

A family that has had children getting emaciated, or have had the terrible turn of events in the previous two years can now benefit from that where kids were lounging with lasagna, and swimming in pizza that their uniforms left them along the way.  Many items are donatable at the moment.

Even the little things are helpful, parents can talk to each other about how they are dealing with expectations of children at this time as they hit school, what they are doing to help their children catch up with the time out of school and how they are able to keep them motivated.

All in all, it helps that parents get aside and gather to help each other groom our future leaders, console each other, motivate each other, tip each other, and get to know and support each other.