In Trinidad, we are often preoccupied with the end result: people who commit heinous, drug related crimes or crimes of passion. The reasoning behind this is probably that, they did something to us, so we must 'do them back!' Should we not instead try to prevent the occurrences of such offences against society instead of prosecution or 'curing' the problem? Put children first. In my opinion, 'the family' is at the centre of everything.
I would like to put a focus on mandatory child-rearing classes as an option for crime prevention. It is unrealistic for us to think that we can stop all crime, but I do believe that we can reduce it by helping parents to better endeavour into childrearing from a place of love and sound childcare practices. A non-threatening model that can be implemented from gestation-(prenatal clinic visits), to postnatal care, even up until ages 5-7 (presently seen as a child's most crucial formative years).
I honestly do not believe that all parents set out to poorly raise their children. I will admit that there are also some callous parents whose main goal is to destroy their offspring for selfish reasons. We have to be mindful though, that there are those who do not know better and would benefit from helpful advice and information.
Are there any statistics that delve into the origins and family history of all our nation's prisoners? Would it not be of aid to us if we knew how many of these offenders came from broken or single parent homes, have histories of neglect and abuse? Which crimes are they most likely to commit? Researching these men and women in the prison system now can shed light on how we can prevent or at least reduce crime in the future.
There are countries that also implement the above-mentioned childcare initiative to better safeguard the world's most precious investment: our youth, our infants. The country that stands out most in my mind is Canada. It is my understanding that they work along with public & health institutions to make sure that from gestation onward, infants get the best possible care from their parents or guardians.
I understand that most of us are averse to all things sappy. Does anyone think of love as a solution to anything, except in the hours before dawn or after a carnival fete? Still love is and should be the origin. We worry about 'wah de police doing' all the time, but let us try to focus on what the parents are doing, what the teachers are doing, grandparents, aunts and uncles as well.
I will keep it brief, as I just wanted to bring this up as something we should think about, so think about it and please love your child. I do believe that in turn they will honestly love you too, want to do better in school and have a greater respect for their fellow man and society.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Lights Off!
The only thing that has her not fully withdrawn is the fact that she still attends school. She has cried now too many times for a girl of her age. She hides from most of her family and her grades that were once stellar, are now down to zero. She is even taunted by some family members about that. She remembers them telling her that she was not that bright a child anymore in a gloating way. The members of the home were exhausted, they were reduced to almost shambles trying to figure out what was wrong with Patsy.
Lilah still keeps her mother's secrets and barely answers to the family when they pose questions to her about her mother. At this time her mother would make her turn the lights on and off, on and off for sometimes up to ten or more times if the lights were turned on in her mother's opinion too early or too late. When Lilah asked her why she would make her do things like that, she would just insinuate that something had made Lilah a bad child, the worst child in the family and that she was giving her training so that she could be more obedient.
With glossy eyes she relives the experience of having to share a bed with a sick-minded person such as Patsy. She recalls a night when she was ready to go to sleep and took off the light. Though her mother was not doing anything, she told her that she did not want the light off yet and she made Lilah put it back on. Lilah did so with reluctance and went to lie down complaining about why she had to try to fall asleep with such glaring lights.
Lilah still keeps her mother's secrets and barely answers to the family when they pose questions to her about her mother. At this time her mother would make her turn the lights on and off, on and off for sometimes up to ten or more times if the lights were turned on in her mother's opinion too early or too late. When Lilah asked her why she would make her do things like that, she would just insinuate that something had made Lilah a bad child, the worst child in the family and that she was giving her training so that she could be more obedient.
With glossy eyes she relives the experience of having to share a bed with a sick-minded person such as Patsy. She recalls a night when she was ready to go to sleep and took off the light. Though her mother was not doing anything, she told her that she did not want the light off yet and she made Lilah put it back on. Lilah did so with reluctance and went to lie down complaining about why she had to try to fall asleep with such glaring lights.
Trying to sleep, a half hour past and her mother who was sitting up as Lilah lay, indicated to Lilah that she could now take off the lights. Frustrated, Lilah refused. Her mother got up and stomped up and down the length of the bed proclaiming that she will make her get up and take off the light. Refusing to move, Lilah is scared at the thought of her mother's rage, she begins to cry covering her face from the light with the pillow.
Patsy now becomes adamant, wild and takes up a knife: one of the many utensils that she keeps in the bedroom. She threatens Lilah with it demanding that she get up and take off the light. Lilah says at that point not wanting to give in to her mother's irrational behaviour made her not move. She reasoned to her mother that she was the one that wanted the lights on and when she felt she was done she should take them off. Her mother is enraged and tries to scare her into getting up. Lilah tells her if you are the one standing, why can't you just take off the lights? With that comment Patsy takes the knife and sticks it under Lilah's hip as she lay on the bed frightened. Lilah, with the pillow on her head and tried to stifle herself, just to get away from the fear. She prays to God for the strength to kill herself. The strength never comes.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
What's Cooking!
Her Tuesday, a time when she is twelve years old and attending high school. She awakes not to the scent of eggs being poached or Trinidadian bake and smoked herring, but to rotted urine. She curses memories of this. To live in a time when most people had forsaken the use of the latrine and welcomed indoor plumbing. Other children like herself enjoyed the use of this luxury as well as their parents, most of them having grown up after that not having ever seen any of their parents' body waste.
Lilah was not that lucky, though her mother had a bathroom facility adjoining the bedroom they shared, she could not understand why her mother lay in one place all day and used a potty when it was time to go to the bathroom. When asked if she was sick she would refuse to answer madating to Lilah that it was her duty to throw out her waste, which most of the time consisted of days old urine and menstrual blood intermingled with bathroom tissue. The potty would almost be tumbling over with this fetid mess. Sometimes to avoid having to throw it out at that stage, Lilah would try to get rid of it when it was fresh or at least a day old. Her mother would spitefully demand that she not throw it out at that stage, sometimes aggressively cursing her. She was always to wait until it was past its rotted state before it was thrown out.
Why Lilah did her mother's bidding? She said that she was confused by her mother's self-proclaimed godliness and would get the feeling that she was sinning if she disobeyed her mother's orders. She was constantly criticized and put down or made to believe that she was like her barely known father when she disobeyed. When she asked her mother why she was being made to do such things her mother told her that she had done the same for her mother and could not complain, which even to me had no basis in common sense because in the times her mother would have grown up, they had used latrines or outhouses. In my opinion rational people generally want their children to have better experiences than they did growing up.
Lilah said that she even came to the point where she refused to throw out the waste and her mother bluntly told her, 'You have to do it because I wiped your bottom when you were a baby!' 'I never asked to be born', Lilah retorted. Patsy promptly told her that that was an evil and ungrateful thing for a child to say. Lilah would go on living with the belief that it was not worth telling anyone because she was being punished for her mother letting her be born. Her mother either directly or indirectly told her that almost all the members in the family did not like her, she began to believe that and that if she had told on her mother, that she would tell the family what a bad child she was. She feared that she would have nowhere to live. Wow!
Lilah was not that lucky, though her mother had a bathroom facility adjoining the bedroom they shared, she could not understand why her mother lay in one place all day and used a potty when it was time to go to the bathroom. When asked if she was sick she would refuse to answer madating to Lilah that it was her duty to throw out her waste, which most of the time consisted of days old urine and menstrual blood intermingled with bathroom tissue. The potty would almost be tumbling over with this fetid mess. Sometimes to avoid having to throw it out at that stage, Lilah would try to get rid of it when it was fresh or at least a day old. Her mother would spitefully demand that she not throw it out at that stage, sometimes aggressively cursing her. She was always to wait until it was past its rotted state before it was thrown out.
Why Lilah did her mother's bidding? She said that she was confused by her mother's self-proclaimed godliness and would get the feeling that she was sinning if she disobeyed her mother's orders. She was constantly criticized and put down or made to believe that she was like her barely known father when she disobeyed. When she asked her mother why she was being made to do such things her mother told her that she had done the same for her mother and could not complain, which even to me had no basis in common sense because in the times her mother would have grown up, they had used latrines or outhouses. In my opinion rational people generally want their children to have better experiences than they did growing up.
Lilah said that she even came to the point where she refused to throw out the waste and her mother bluntly told her, 'You have to do it because I wiped your bottom when you were a baby!' 'I never asked to be born', Lilah retorted. Patsy promptly told her that that was an evil and ungrateful thing for a child to say. Lilah would go on living with the belief that it was not worth telling anyone because she was being punished for her mother letting her be born. Her mother either directly or indirectly told her that almost all the members in the family did not like her, she began to believe that and that if she had told on her mother, that she would tell the family what a bad child she was. She feared that she would have nowhere to live. Wow!
People often look at the father as the parent capable of abuse, when we hear of such cases as Lilah's some might even feel that Lilah's mother was just a victim of single parenthood. When the father is the perpetrator of the abuse, they call him sick and sadistic. A systematic and abusive mother should be called the same, especially in this time of gender equity.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Precious Time
She wakes up in the morning to a mother that has no friends and praises her own self while finding fault in others, a tactic *Lilah claims was like to a child a sneaky form of brainwashing, because *Lilah actually began to believe that her mother was perfect. *Patsy would readily proclaim, 'Why can't people think like me?' Her mother would also tell her that she did not want any friends and that she could have if she wanted to, but friends cause too much trouble.
She tries to make her way to school, clinging on to the watch that her uncle gave her as a gift because of her stellar performance in her grades. Her mother takes it away, telling her that she would not need the watch at school and that she needed it more than *Lilah did. *Lilah was crushed. She would sullenly look on as her mother neurotically ate an almost 5 inch mound of food with the watch clasped in her soiled hands. *Patsy compulsively looked at the watch every minute, every second. The watch would be covered with rotted sauces from food, so much so that you could not tell the time without scraping the food from the watch's face.
*Lilah still hoped that one day the watch would be hers again. Her uncle had instructed her to wear the watch every day. When he realized that she was not wearing it, he would enquire what had happened. * Kara felt afraid and dared not tell the truth that would expose her mother's behaviour. Instead, she would claim that she had forgotten to wear it. An excuse that would make her uncle frown and she thought, seemingly believe that she did not appreciate the gift and that she was ungrateful and irresponsible. She said that she would then go on to live a life of making herself look erratic to hide her mother's secrets. She admits she does not know how she passed her examinations to go on to Secondary school.
Child abuse has many infestations, sexual abuse and flat out physical abuse emotional are all damaging, but what is surprising to me as I was doing research is that Emotional abuse can be most volatile as it may not be as readily detected and proved like Sexual Molestation and Physical Abuse. Most people cannot prove it. It destabilizes the child in a vicious way, a case of your word against mine with no physical evidence to prove any misdeed. Children as such, go on to be sometimes mislabeled mentally unstable.
What is also saddening is that like hazing, it can lead to a lifetime of self-destructive tendencies. Can you identify children in your neighbourhood like this, or even perhaps in your family?
She tries to make her way to school, clinging on to the watch that her uncle gave her as a gift because of her stellar performance in her grades. Her mother takes it away, telling her that she would not need the watch at school and that she needed it more than *Lilah did. *Lilah was crushed. She would sullenly look on as her mother neurotically ate an almost 5 inch mound of food with the watch clasped in her soiled hands. *Patsy compulsively looked at the watch every minute, every second. The watch would be covered with rotted sauces from food, so much so that you could not tell the time without scraping the food from the watch's face.
*Lilah still hoped that one day the watch would be hers again. Her uncle had instructed her to wear the watch every day. When he realized that she was not wearing it, he would enquire what had happened. * Kara felt afraid and dared not tell the truth that would expose her mother's behaviour. Instead, she would claim that she had forgotten to wear it. An excuse that would make her uncle frown and she thought, seemingly believe that she did not appreciate the gift and that she was ungrateful and irresponsible. She said that she would then go on to live a life of making herself look erratic to hide her mother's secrets. She admits she does not know how she passed her examinations to go on to Secondary school.
Child abuse has many infestations, sexual abuse and flat out physical abuse emotional are all damaging, but what is surprising to me as I was doing research is that Emotional abuse can be most volatile as it may not be as readily detected and proved like Sexual Molestation and Physical Abuse. Most people cannot prove it. It destabilizes the child in a vicious way, a case of your word against mine with no physical evidence to prove any misdeed. Children as such, go on to be sometimes mislabeled mentally unstable.
What is also saddening is that like hazing, it can lead to a lifetime of self-destructive tendencies. Can you identify children in your neighbourhood like this, or even perhaps in your family?
Sunday, August 23, 2009
It begins
*Patsy, *Lilah's mother walked around with an advancing girth and lambasted and berated anybody who would dare tell her that she was pregnant. As a 32 year old woman obsessed with religion and thoughts of God, pregnancy out of wedlock had to be denied, forget that pesky belly, it was the product of witchcraft she would claim. 'Somebody put something in mih belly, and it moving too!'
After being urged to stop denying the presence of an infant in her womb, *Patsy went to the doctor who officiated the pregnancy and informed her that she was 7 months pregnant. That would trumpet the start of a mania involving the number 7. She would then tell *Lilah that she had a dream of a number 7 floating from heaven coming down to her gate (she claimed that it was Jesus) and that he shook her hand and congratulated her. It was no surprise *Lilah was born an exact 7 pounds. She still does not know how she pulled that one off.
Does *Lilah look like a saviour? Why, I do not know. She is an overweight 23 year old that looks like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. She barely finished school and makes fairly low wages. She looks down as she tells me that she is also not well liked. Sad to say earlier in life she had started to show promise as a gifted child, but was stunted by the same person who touted her supposed divinity.
*Lilah's father quickly disappeared, from her life, she reasons that he walked away from the weird woman he had sex with and her child that issued from that. She had to go through a lifetime of pretending to make her father believe that they were doing well, even though they were extremely poor, part due to her mother's refusal to work. She proclaims that her mother never worked a day in her life and has more or less sat in a room alone just thinking about God going to church on rare occasions.
I wondered what makes some people so obsessed with God and have delusions of being the chosen one. It is perplexing how many people in this world today of so many religions believe that they are the 'Chosen One'.
This was *Lilah's Sunday
After being urged to stop denying the presence of an infant in her womb, *Patsy went to the doctor who officiated the pregnancy and informed her that she was 7 months pregnant. That would trumpet the start of a mania involving the number 7. She would then tell *Lilah that she had a dream of a number 7 floating from heaven coming down to her gate (she claimed that it was Jesus) and that he shook her hand and congratulated her. It was no surprise *Lilah was born an exact 7 pounds. She still does not know how she pulled that one off.
Does *Lilah look like a saviour? Why, I do not know. She is an overweight 23 year old that looks like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. She barely finished school and makes fairly low wages. She looks down as she tells me that she is also not well liked. Sad to say earlier in life she had started to show promise as a gifted child, but was stunted by the same person who touted her supposed divinity.
*Lilah's father quickly disappeared, from her life, she reasons that he walked away from the weird woman he had sex with and her child that issued from that. She had to go through a lifetime of pretending to make her father believe that they were doing well, even though they were extremely poor, part due to her mother's refusal to work. She proclaims that her mother never worked a day in her life and has more or less sat in a room alone just thinking about God going to church on rare occasions.
I wondered what makes some people so obsessed with God and have delusions of being the chosen one. It is perplexing how many people in this world today of so many religions believe that they are the 'Chosen One'.
This was *Lilah's Sunday
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
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