Children are products of their environment
Dear Editor,
Five of us, retired professionals over 70 years old, agreed to have Freddie’s two great grandsons, ages five and seven, spend a day with us.
Their mother would not give them up to Freddie who had filed for them and her son’s wife did not want to hear about them. They read for us, sang for us and showed us the latest dance steps and we laughed and tried them. They were bright kids. After lunch, they went out to play with the neighbours’ children and they soon came back with a ball they did not own.
“The lady in dat house say we have dirty mout and mussen play wid decent children. Wat we do, Grandy?”
The children played as they did in the settlement. They shouted to pass the r..s ball and other four-letter words that came out easily. They live in a neighbourhood where children are put in line with ‘beat, flog, kick and lick’. Parts of the body are identified in easy four-letter words like cock and boob. Four-letter words also identify the functions of the body and the children use the s..t and p..s, not because they have foul mouths but that they have not yet learnt the social acceptance of faeces and urine. Sometimes they use five-letter words for vagina and rectum but overall it’s the all-invasive, harsh-sounding four-letter words that’s making life miserable for them.
One of our other great-grand, recently moved uptown, was kicked out of a prep school because he was disruptive and loud. He dared to correct a teacher in a crude fashion. She kept talking about sexual intercourse, and this got on his nerves. He put up his hand and said: “Is lie shi ah tell oonu. It name f… Parents felt his presence in the school was not good for their children.
These children are products of their surroundings and ways have to be found to continue to save them as they and their parents become part of social mobility. A couple years ago, I was on an 8:00 am flight from New York to Kingston. The baby across the aisle began to bawl in a loud, rusty voice.
“Ah want mi bokkle. Ah want mi bc bokkle. Ah want mi rc bokkle.” The parents smiled as they silenced the fat baby who sucked the milk from a filled bottle. Some passengers got up to glare at the baby. We’d never heard this on a plane before. Again, the children are products of their environment and we have to find different ways of helping children who spew unacceptable four-letter words, to prepare for a better world.
Veronica Blake Carnegie.
veronica_carnegie @cwjamaica.com
