As odd as it seems to have a profound message coming to us via Lil Wayne, he definitely serves one up in his new How to Love video. If you haven’t seen the video, it focuses on a little girl who grows up watching her mother go through a series of abusive and troubled relationships. Without knowing what a loving relationship is supposed to be, the girl follows in those troubled footsteps as an adult with tragic results.
Yes, it feels more than a little hypocritical for a man who has built his career in large part on the degradation of women and has more baby mommas than I care to count to be doling out love lessons. But at its base, the message is part of why it’s so important for sites like BMWK to exist. As parents, we are showing an entire generation how to love, and as a community, we’ve been pretty bad teachers.
In the black community especially, we have embraced this mantra that as long as I’m taking care of my kids, my personal relationships don’t matter. Yet contrary to what has become convenient for us to believe, when our kids grow up and are in their own relationships, they aren’t modeling their relationships after our parenting, they’re modeling their relationships after our relationships.
Whether we want to admit it or not, the choices that we make in our personal relationships are teaching our sons and daughters how to love and how to be loved in their own. Even outside of the extremes of the abusive relationships shown in the How to Love video, so much of what we are teaching them is problematic.
We need to take a serious look at ourselves and what our kids are copying. If we are honest with ourselves we’ll realize that as a community, we are not raising future husbands and wives because that’s not the love model that we’ve shown our children. We aren’t teaching our daughters that they deserve the respect of a man that’s going to come to them with a ring, and pledge the rest of their lives at bare minimum. Instead of showing them marriages built on commitment and respect, we’re showing them selfish unions full of disrespect and infidelity.
It’s a natural reaction to want to validate our own actions, and rush to our own defense instead of examining ourselves. But I challenge you BMWK family, today, whether you are a married or single parent, to truly take a look at what you are teaching your kids about how to love. Not how to love as a parent, but what template are you giving your children to copy for their future relationships.
Fathers, imagine that you were the man your daughter brought home in the future; are you good enough for her? Mothers, imagine that your daughter is in your relationship. Is that a place that you would want her to be? Are you setting your children up for future happiness, or are you giving them a future that includes all of the same mistakes that you’ve made.
Now realize that none of these scenarios are truly in your imagination. Just like we teach our children how to clean or read, they’re taking their lessons on how to love from us whether we like it or not. It’s time for us to examine our lesson plans and do what it takes to become worthy teachers.
Wow, I think this video will have a major impact on our children, my daughter is a fan of Lil’Wayne , and this could be his way of growing up I know he has daughters, Our youth are so influenced by his music so prayerfully this will bring about awareness of selfworth!!! I never thought I would say this but GOOD JOB LIL’WAYNE.
you may want to listen to the song ‘She Will” before you get comfortable with Lil Wayne influencing your daughter.
This was a powerful video. I hope it helps inspire the type of dialogue offline that will help more people realize that kids indeed do learn these type of things by example.
great video and the message is so clear. your article was right on point. we as parents have a duty to teach our children what love really should look like.
It’s an unfortunate reality that most parents think what they TELL their children is what makes them a good parent. It has been and will always be what you DO that affects your children the most. (I think most of the “do-as-I-say-and-not-as-I-do” generation will attest to that.) Teaching by example will always exert greater force and the yield positive results we want to see in our children. Children need to see and know that whatever you’re asking them CAN be done. They know it’s possible when the people they love the most and the people who love them the most–Mommy and Daddy–demonstrate it.
“…These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”~Deuteronomy 6:6, 7
I wish there was a “dislike” button for this article. Wayne’s video is not profound. The “uplifting” portion of the video showed her repeating the cycle of young women having children out of wedlock (there’s no ring on her finger and no mention of a husband, fiancee, or even a boyfriend). So in the world according to Wayne the best we can hope for our daughters is that they graduate from hair school before becoming a baby momma. He earns no brownie points from me for this one….
i can agree with you, but the cat is trying to start from some where. He didn’t grow up in a Crosby household. To him and where he is from that is success. A child growing up in a two parent household regardless of how untraditional. Graduating and doing something other than stripping is successful. Am i saying give him brownie points’, no…. it is coming a far way from asking someone to booty pop on a handstand. Regular cars aren’t meant to go 0 to 80. You can’t expect wayne to be come conscience rapper over night!
did you watch the entire video? it gave 2 sceneros, the 1st was the one you described and then the other was the total opposite, it show the viewer an option to take that would not lead to all that negativity and destruction … watch the entire video again and you’ll see
I am happy
to see a video like this coming from a rapper that does have so much influence
on our children today. However it is truly important that we remember who the
real teachers are. I teach a curriculum that has the mantra “You Love Live
is not Neutral.” This information is directed at teen and young adult
parents that teaches them exactly what this song is saying. I will have to incorporate
this into the curriculum. Thank you for sharing.
There was a 14 yo girl on Beyond Scared Straight last night who was making bad choices because she saw her stepfather beat her mother and point a gun at her head. She said it was a family secret, and she was told not to speak the family business outside the house. And a lot of adults are still making choices based on the family secrets they’re keeping.
You’ll never hear me call Lil Wayne a role model for our daughters, but I know this video will resonate with a lot of women, old and young, alike. And hopefully, they’ll learn how to love and how others should love them from it.
Also teach our daughters to seek more than shiny chains and money, if you act respectful you will attract respectful people.
It would really move my heart, if Lil Wayne moved toward this genre of art, he really has the attention of not only young girls/women but also young boys/men … he could really make a change … this video is one of the most moving videos I’ve seen in a very long time, I even teared up … every young girl AND boy, woman AND man should view it … 2 thumbs up for posting this Mr. & Mrs. Tyler!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE your plight!!!
Sincerely,
Utokia Langley
http://www.shesgotflavor.com
No!!!!!!!!!!!!! How can a man who does not know how to love teach anyone anything but the same. The song is soooooooo wicked. It’s a sublte agreement to the lives of women who “have to do what they got to do”! In one of his verses he says, “But I admire your poppin bottles and dippin’/Just as much as you admire bartending and strippin/Baby, so dont be mad, nobody else trippin”. What?!?!?!?!? Please don’t get it twisted, this little dude don’t want to see change in women. He doesn’t have a bledding heart for them.
He’s encouraging the same nasty disgusting hate that most of these rappers and men, if you want to call them that, do. I hate that people are so blind. The light of Christ is the only thing that will make people see.