‘Hey bwoy mi nuh call yuh?’

THE idea that bad parenting creates candidates for criminality may be a view that ignores the cases where law-abiding adults emerge from abusive homes. However, for graduates of the UNDP/Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre (WROC) Parenting Life Skills Programme recently held in three inner-city communities, the connection between poor parenting practices and crime is worth considering and mitigating.

The initiative is part of the Jamaica Violence Prevention Peace and Sustainable Development Programme catered to parents and teachers of basic school children in the Lyndhurst/Greenwich, Trench Town and Jones Town communities.

Twenty-eight-year-old Charline Mightly is one of the participants from the Whitefield Town/Trench Town area who attended the three days of training and later became valedictorian for the freshly- inspired graduating class. Funny enough, she isn’t a parent but admits that her reason for going (to the training) was curiosity.

With the interactive training now completed, Mightly is quite passionate about what she has learnt.

“It was an eye-opening experience; an opportunity for you to put into perspective the situation with the mothers and children in the community,” she said.

She recounted interactions between mothers and children in her community.

“Hey bwoy mi nuh call yuh? And whop! And then you would also have the bad words and the styling,” she explained with dismay.

She asserted that, “how you treat children. influences their behaviour when they are older”.

“We all know that illiteracy impacts on violence but how we parent influences future generations in crime,” she reasoned. “Parenting and life skills will help to reduce crime in the community. When I saw the connection I recognised that it’s a huge responsibility.”

And that responsibility involves appropriate disciplinary techniques. Mightly, who was physically abused as a child, believes that “beating is necessary but how you beat, when, where and why is important”.

Caring for at least three of her nieces and nephews on a regular basis, Mightly admits that, “my first instinct is to hit, but from the training it helps me to hold back a bit, start to think of the child and their reaction to our reaction”.

In spite of her own struggles, she is adamant that beating cannot be the first response.

An avid romance and paranormal novels reader, Mightly doesn’t harbour fairy tales about bringing a child into the world. While she admits that the “pregnancy bug” has bitten, she doesn’t intend on casually having a baby.

“I went through hell as a child so I’m not going to have a child unless I can provide at least the basics, so I don’t have to take it out on the child,” she said.

And even while she tries to secure her dream job in the tourism sector, she believes that the parenting life-skills training has made her “more prepared to have a child”.

Tanya Robinson-Brown, 32, from the Jones Town area, also strongly believes in taking responsibility for her three daughters. Given the negative influences in her community, Robinson-Brown, who is deeply concerned about how here daughters are raised, doesn’t allow them to go outside and play.

“Mi cloak dem up too much,” she admits, but reasons that it’s better than having to deal with street influences.

From the parenting life skills programme she has learnt “how to talk to your kids, how to find out the problems they are having”.

“I am talking to my (older) daughter now,” she said of the seven year old.

On the matter of the link between parenting and criminality, Robinson-Brown offers one important caution: in spite of what parents do, the individual will become who they are.

“I agree and disagree. A parent can be a good parent and a child stills falls into peer pressure and engage in reckless or criminal behaviour,” she said, citing examples in her community.

Participant from the Lyndhurst/Greenwich area and WROC community mobiliser Christine Senior also has mixed feelings about the link between bad parenting and criminality and identifies some other intervening factors.

“I would say yes to an extent and no because I grew up with a mother and father and they were loving to me, yet when I had my first child because of the relationship with the father, a lot of things manifested there in the beginning which caused me to start abusing my child in some way, but then again because of the training that I received from my parents and my upbringing, I learnt to put my personal problems aside and that helped me to turn around and help my child,” she shared.

Senior added that the parenting workshop was a “healing and learning experience” for her since the format allowed participants to freely share their unique experiences and receive advice and support.

Facilitator and counsellor at WROC Faith St Catherine explained that this was important to the overall success of the programme. During the training sessions St Catherine said there were times they had to stop because people had issues arising from abusive parenting patterns.

“We have always been trying to get funding for parenting (workshops) because it is crucial to the social problems that exist,” she said. Indeed, she isn’t divided on the direct link between poor parenting practices and criminality.

“The emphasis is on academics and enough attention is not paid to emotional development. We don’t teach people to ask themselves why they do things,” she noted. However, she believes that through the training of “one small corner of the society” at a time, people are being helped which she believes is reason to hope.

For her part, project co-ordinator Alva Graham is heartened by the success of the project.

“We are going to have a follow-up session in the next month where we are going back to the three communities and part of the activities for that one day workshop in each community is to engage these teachers and parents how they can develop a model that they can use in their communities working in conjunction with the basic schools,” she said.