Saturday 28 June 2008
- Games, entertainment and fun for everyone!
- Interactive workshops and demonstrations
- FEATURING Niambi Jaha-Echols – author of “Project Butterfly: Supporting Young Women and Girls through the Transitions of Life
- Activities for kids
- Vendors market with cultural products
Prizes and FREE stuff! - FAMJAM!
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Because of our heritage of whippings and slavery, we have the idea that we have to beat our children and discipline them into being the best that they can be for them to thrive in a society that sees them as less.
By Akilah Haneef-Jabari
Spiritual equality is where we look at children as either being spiritually equal to the adult or even spiritually superior to the adult because they are sinless.
This is not a concept that I’ve always employed in the raising of my four children. Like most people, when I became a mother, I figured I was a mother because I had these children. I did a lot of reading, even beginning at my first pregnancy, and I continued to read books on parenting for about a decade before I came to the knowledge that I have right now about spiritual equality.
The difference it’s made in my
relationship with my children is that my children are allowed a
voice. I do not try to dictate to them what their lives should be. I
don’t do things like hit my children, or belittle them and call them
names, because I’m aware of their value.
Hitting should never be used as a means of discipline. First of all,
it doesn’t work. It becomes something that you have to escalate. You
move from tapping the toddler on the back of the hand to beating the
ten-year old with a belt because you have to lay it on harder and
harder as the years go by for any result to be seen. And children
only learn to hide the negative behaviour rather than to stop it
altogether.
Historically I do know that it is a definite part of our culture. It is not solely familiar to Africans in the Diaspora. Unfortunately, because of our heritage of whippings and slavery, we have the idea that we have to beat our children and discipline them into being the best that they can be for them to thrive in a society that sees them as less.
Parents hit their children when they feel frustrated or stressed. It is not necessarily what the child has done; it is the parents’ lack of resources on how to deal with misbehaviour.
I suggest using consequences. There are different kinds of consequences. Natural consequence is where you allow things to naturally occur to the child. For instance, if the child were to leave his homework at home, the consequence is that he doesn’t hand it in and then he gets the mark that he would get from not handing in his homework. You don’t run after him and bring it to school for him. You allow him to suffer the natural consequences of not doing what he should have been doing.
Another one is a logical consequence where the parent decides on what should happen and applies it. Here’s an example: I say to my daughter, You can invite your friend over to play once your room is clean. And she says that she doesn’t want to clean her room. I’ll say, Well, that’s up to you. You’ve decided not to have your friend over, and that’s the end of the story.
Using consequences decreases parental
stress. Another bonus is that it allows the child choice. Children
become very aware that they are making choices in their lives every
hour, every day. The choices that they are making are going to
affect them directly.
The flipside is encouragement, encouraging children to be productive
members in their society, and it starts at home. Allowing children
to be aware of others is the first step. Let children know that you
as a parent have needs.
Take from the children when they offer to you. Children always offer us things. We’ve all been offered a soggy cookie or a wet apple drenched in toddler spit. And we say No, I don’t want it. Take it! You don’t have to eat it. You take it, say thank you and encourage the child to continue to give and be a productive member of your home. Allow them and encourage them to pick up their blocks, put them in a box, and keep moving forward with respect.
This teaches them that there are other people around them that they have to be aware of, and that they have a responsibility to pull their weight in society. It feeds their natural inclination toward being that giving and loving person that they are. It increases their self esteem when they realize that they can positively affect others by their generosity.
We all know what we start at home ends abroad. We end up having people who know that it is expected of them to pull their share. We end up with children who choose to give back to society. Children who might be interested in stopping a fight or counselling a friend who feels depressed or helping somebody who’s disabled. You’ll see all these things manifesting in your children.
You end up with children who would not
go out and bully others or be very negative to other people;
children who are very capable and independent. I believe the goal of
parenting is to raise independent and capable people for society’s
benefit.
I’m the second of six children and I’m of Caribbean decent. My
father’s from Trinidad and my mother’s from Jamaica. I was born in
Hamilton, Ontario.
My mother was raised in Jamaica under the strap, as they all were back in the day. She beat us when we were little children. But my mother is a nurse by training.She once did a segment in psychiatric nursing in England. She realized at some point that she beat us because she was stressed. She reflected on her psychiatric nursing and came to the conclusion that beating children is something that she absolutely must stop – and she did. I was never hit after age eleven and my younger siblings benefited more because some of them were not hit at all. This teaching that my mother put forth was something that always stuck in my mind.
I started parenting and, being married to a Trinidadian man who was also raised with the strap, we started with the heavy-handedness with the children. Then I was reminded of my mother’s approach and things that I had seen: children afraid of parents and all the things that had come out of living in a stressful home where they were beaten.
My husband and I decided that we were no longer going to use any form of physical discipline in our home. We told our children that they would never be hit again. And it has changed their approach: they are far more verbal, they stand up for themselves, they are not afraid to tell us if we’re wrong. The relationship is great, as a result. There’s much more respect in the home.
Children under the age of twelve are in a period of latency. When you’re beating and belittling them, they will cry and then they will come and hug you up. They will kiss you. They will tell you “I love you Mummy, I love you Daddy.” They will say they are sorry.
After the period of latency, children experience a personal awakening. At that point, they become very much more critical of their parents. They start to remember the wrongs that you have inflicted on them and start to analyze them. While you think that they have swept them under the rug, after the period of latency they lift up that rug and start doing some housecleaning.
That’s when you start seeing drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, running away from home, the out of control stuff. Every single one of us who reaches adulthood has been a teenager. But some people act crazy and some do not. Those who really act up a lot, you scratch the surface and you’ll see the dysfunction behind them, the broken relationship with the parents. Sometimes they come from a very controlling home where the discipline has been very heavy and they just break out.
Healthy teens who were raised in a healthy home environment may act up. They may. But there’s no way they’re going to get as crazy as those who were in an unhealthy environment.
Someone’s going to say ‘I was beaten silly. I was cussed, I was called all sorts of names and I did not act up as a teenager. And I’m fine.’ The thing is, we all have different personalities. So somebody would take all of that and they would become passive. Millions of people did not act up as teenagers who were oppressed as children. The results of their mishandling will come out in other ways. It may be eating disorders or maybe violence toward their spouses. It may not come out as a teenager. It may wait until they become parents themselves. But it is definitely going to come out.
When your child is a baby, you should begin as you hope to end. The relationship that we have with our newborn, we expect to continue. We expect to have a thirty-year old. We expect to be in our sixties and have relationships with our adult children. We should be working towards that.
You don’t get off on a tangent, beating somebody and cussing them and belittling them and then expect that when you are a senior and they are in their thirties that they’re going to be calling you and bringing you flowers on Mother’s Day. They might do it out of obligation. They will not do it out of the feeling behind it.
You don’t have to have out of control teenagers. All children want to please their parents. They only decide not to when they’ve been so hurt they decide to get revenge on the parents. Or they only decide not to when their parents have told them from day one that they’re good for nothing. They start to believe they’re good for nothing and start acting accordingly. Start the relationship with your child as you hope to end.
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