Latest update May 13th, 2024 12:59 AM
Oct 12, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column
There has never been a school for parenting and one doubts that there will ever be one. But at the pace that society is changing, parents are required to change their techniques. At the same time, there is legislation in some countries that actually put additional pressure on parents.
Back when I was a child, parents adopted a simple technique; punish the child when he/she steps out of line. And the punishment was often painful in keeping with what sociologists at the time called one part of the pleasure-pain principle.
This was a simple principle; if the child did something worthy of reward then the pleasure part of the equation was adopted. It could have been a trip to the cinema or some special treat. Such was the incentive that children almost invariably sought the pleasure.
At the same time the rest of the society was looking and adults were crucial. They had the power to scold any child because parents knew that they could not be around their child all the time and therefore needed the extra eyes to help keep the child in line.
The developed world tended to treat their children differently, especially during the latter portion of the last century. Of course the children were demanding their freedoms, so one found children moving away from home as soon as they considered themselves adults. When they did that, parents tended to have no control over what the child did.
The good thing was that many left home with good values, so they were not as recalcitrant as they were likely to be. But they themselves became parents and did not apply the kind of pressure that their parents did with them. The result was that there was a new breed of children.
In Guyana, technology brought what was happening in the other countries, and being a people who like to emulate others, we decided to let our children do what they saw their peers doing in the other countries.
Meanwhile, adults began to pay less attention to the children of others. Respect went through the window. When children once offered a greeting to any adult they may encounter, they simply went about their business ignoring whatever they encountered.
Those parents who opted to take the rod to their children were looked at as some kind of pariah. There were even neighbours who reported such action to the police and since no one wanted to spend time in jail, many parents simply gave up trying to use the harsh method to discipline their children.
This led to parents expecting teachers to instill discipline in children, but some of the teachers had children of their own, and many said that they were not going to “kill themselves” over other people’s children.
It is therefore not surprising that children are going about their merry way doing as they very well like. They see themselves as adults and try to do what adults do.
So we come to what was posted on social media involving four or five schoolchildren. The comments were not pleasant, but those commenting on the children had been exposed to the same thing in their younger days. Many perhaps did the same thing, but there were no phones with cameras to record their activities.
In one case, the child came from a home where the parents were decent people who tried to instill proper discipline in their children. What they did not teach that child was about peer pressure. Indeed, when children attain puberty the hormones rage. Without control, they simply succumb to whatever the urges are.
It is the same on the streets. Young boys succumb to peer pressure and take up guns. They want material things, and hearing that they can get these things by violent means, they yield. It is not necessarily true that all the young gunmen are from depressed communities. Some come from homes where parents try their damnedest to ensure that their children walk the straight and narrow.
I do not have a solution to the problem and I do hope that the experts can help. Indeed, way back then there were youth clubs that occupied the children’s time, and at the same time, helped them develop people skills. These clubs provided some pleasure for the children, especially when they went on trips.
A lot of focus was placed on the boy scouts and girl guides. These are not so prominent these days. In fact, there are not too many youth organisations. I walk by the various cricket grounds and I do not see as many young boys as I once did. This would explain the dearth of cricketers coming out of Guyana for the West Indies cricket team.
If only some group could turn back the clock on youth activities, we may see a change in what people believe is the disappearance of disciplined young people in Guyana. As someone suggested, we should open a school that would teach parenting, but then again many people, from the time they hear the word school, go running in the other direction.
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