It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote about the importance of allowing children to be children. That was in the context of conversations taking place about rapper Yung Miami’s son being captured on video throwing dollars at twerking dancers at Rolling Loud. He’s 10 by the way.
In the latest installment of “Let these kids be kids,” we need to briefly talk about another celebrity child: Megaa Grandberry. He’s the 8-year-old son of singer Omarion and TV and Internet personality Apryl Jones. Amid new rumors swirling that Jones and boyfriend, actor Taye Diggs, may have broken up, he hopped on a recent Instagram Live with his mother and shared some interesting opinions about The Best Man star, alleging that he smokes weed.
“He don’t smoke weed!” Jones said.
“He has,” Megaa replied.
“Did he ever smoke in front of you?”
“No, but I smelled it.”
“He does edibles, baby! Stop saying that on the Live. He don’t smoke weed!”
“I’m telling y’all the truth. Edible weed…so?”
The conversation went on, with Jones addressing questions about where Diggs, who often posts hilarious clips with her on social media, was amid the rumors. It got more awkward from there.
“Everybody keeps saying where is Taye?” said Jones.
“He ain’t here,” Megaa replied.
“Where is he?”
“He ain’t here.”
“He’s working.”
“He ain’t working, he ain’t here. We ain’t know specifically [if] he’s working or not. Did he text you? Show me the text!”
“He just sent me a video yesterday. Me and Taye talk all the time,” she told the child.
“Mm mm. It’s only for y’all. She’s lying. She’s lying! Show me.”
She then paused the Live to show him the proof.
“That was yesterday, not today,” he replied. “I thought you was talking about you ‘talk to him every day?'”
Even Jones was a bit taken aback by it all, saying, “My son just ain’t it. You ain’t talking about the truth.” She would go on to say she “raised him to be a better kid” before talking to their father, Omarion, and joking about him coming to pick them up asap.
The vast majority of comments I’ve come across regarding the mother-and-son moment were critical of the fact that he was so comfortable talking about her business publicly. I would have to agree that it was wildly inappropriate. When talking about kids being kids, that also involves the idea of not having conversations with them about things they don’t need to know about and are too young to really understand. As the old saying goes, “Stay out of grown folks’ business.”
I do believe that it is important to be able to be a safe space for your kids to ask you questions and speak what’s on their minds so that they know they can always come to you. But there need to be limits — especially in front of the Internet. There is no reason to explain to an 8-year-old the difference between edible cannabis and regular weed. He did not need to see her text messages for him to believe that all is well between her and her boyfriend. And boy if I even twisted my mouth to try and imply that my mother was lying, the look on her face would stop me dead in my tracks. He not only said it twice but yelled it emphatically the second time. It was all too much, whether they were joking around or not. And it’s ok if he’s not fond of Diggs. He does have his own father. But out of respect, she shouldn’t have allowed him to go on for too long about the star.
And considering that aside from him being divorced, being affected by colorism, having some resentment over people thinking he only dated white women, and being a father, there isn’t much that we know about Diggs’ personal life (ok, so maybe we know a little bit), it feels weird that a child of all people, and not his own, would be telling us all of this. The idea that an 8-year-old is saying he’s a weed lover, and for his girlfriend to, in turn, divulge that no, he’s actually more of an edibles guy instead, again, is unbelievably wild.
It’s also important for Jones to not encourage that. She didn’t need his help in answering questions regarding where the actor was and she didn’t need to prove anything to him about how they communicate. Once Megaa felt it was fine to share his first thought on Diggs in a public forum, that would have been the best time to stop and ask him to excuse himself to go watch Nickelodeon or do whatever an 8-year-old does, or cut the whole Live off and try again later. But it went on. And on. And on.
One of the risks of this type of stuff is that if he feels comfortable being in and sharing their business on Instagram Live with people, he may not have any qualms with finding his way in the business of other adults in his life outside of the home and sharing it with whomever he pleases. That would not be his fault, as it’s something that should be made clear: You are a child, not a friend. That goes for Jones, too, because some parents have a habit of sharing frustrations with a partner or ex with or in front of their children and then kids run with it to others. The more those boundaries are made fuzzy, the more often we might find him in situations like this, telling family secrets like Kourtney Kardashian’s son Mason used to do on his secret Instagram accounts. It’s not a good habit to nurture and at his age he needs to focus on loving sports, cartoons, dancing (like his dad), and enjoying what’s left of his summer — not jumping knee-deep in adult business and conversations.