A really famous song came on the radio the other day when I was in the car, and it annoyed me. It was the song Waterfalls by American girl group TLC. I used to sing it quite happily as a child but now, sat in traffic; I was listening to it and singing along with the lyrics (the ones I still remembered at least) to discover that actually it is a very bad message to send out to an influential youth.
“Don’t go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to,” is a section of the chorus and is a completely backwards logic compared to all the other messages we send our children. We tell them to be themselves, be happy with who they are and embrace their minds. Is telling them not to go after their dreams, after their version of a waterfall, really a good example we should be setting our children? I don’t think it is.
We already teach them right and wrong, we teach them good and bad but we should also extend that to their future – tell them that if they work hard enough, they can be whatever they want to be. Tell them to chase their waterfalls.