I can see why God listens very well to children. They're just so innocent and can believe and have such strong faith right away. As people grow older, they experience more things and I guess because of this, they become more skeptical. It's like they seem to associate children and everything in accordance with them as only "childish" and nothing more than that. In reality though, there's so much a person can learn from children. Also, there's so many things that we learn at a child's age that we tend to forget as we get older. We really need to take a step back sometimes and realize how it was when we were their age and sometimes we also need to be reminded of what was taught to us back then.

A couple of days ago, I was at the YMCA exercising. After my workout, I went to the TV lounge to take a little break. There was no one there except for this young boy. He had on a cap, a t-shirt that was way too big for him, and a basketball (of course he had on pants, but the things I listed were the things I found interesting haha). As I entered the room, we acknowledged each other with a smile and mutual nod. I was looking at a book and he was sitting quietly watching TV. I will admit, I was being a total creeper because every once in awhile, instead of reading the book I would be peering over it to study that kid. He was just quietly watching TV so I looked to see what was on and here, the channel that was on was MTV! Now personally, I don't like MTV and children should definitely not be watching that stuff or even be into that kind of stuff. The things that were on that channel were definitely not age appropriate either. That was when I really started paying attention to him and seeing if he really wanted to watch this or if he thought, I don't know, maybe because someone had left it on this channel he thought he didn't have a choice but to watch it. I finally came out and said "hey kid. Is the basketball court closed or something?" and he told me that it was closed for cleaning, so I said "Oh okay. I was wondering why no one was in there. Look, are you watching this?" then he nodded his head. Then I said "oh okay, I was just wondering, because you know, if you don't want to watch it, you can just change the channel, okay? I'm not watching so you don't have to worry about me." Then later my mom came in and started reading the newspaper that was on the table. I was looking in her direction but in all honesty I was still observing that kid. After a few more minutes I looked at the TV and again with the whole inappropriateness I was like "Hey kid, are you sure you're watching? Because I don't know about you, but personally, I would rather be watching Spongebob than this." Then he smiled and asked me if I could change the channel for him and so I changed it to the one that he wanted me to change it to. Thank goodness it was age-appropriate and something that he should be watching and personally, I'd honestly rather be watching that than whatever was happening on the other channel.

Later after I was explaining to Mom my intentions she told me "well, how could he change the channel? He was too short!" which made me wonder if the only reason why the channel was never changed was because he actually couldn't reach it and was afraid to ask a "stranger" if he/she could change it for him. That brings me to another reflection: the saying "if you don't ask for it, it will never be given to you" is so true. You have to be willing to ask for help when you know you need it, and even when you think you can do it but in reality actually do need help. Otherwise, where will the improvement be?

I mustered enough courage to step outside of my box to talk to him and to hopefully, even if it's in the littlest of ways, prevent him from getting sucked in any further to those kinds of things. To be honest, it kinda surprised me because you really never know what the simplest of actions can actually do.

Regardless, I didn't want that kid to be stripped of his innocent nature at such a young age. I didn't want that kid to be exposed to that kind of stuff, especially at his age. Society puts all of this stuff out there and young people see it and eat it all up. They get brainwashed into thinking that all of that is cool and that they should be doing that too, even though that's so far from the truth.

Sure, call me traditional, old-school, whatever. Personally though, I'd rather have children be concerned with what Dr. Suess book to read next rather than how to twerk in a bucket of water.