Aba A Luke

It may sound sil­ly to some to delve in­to the im­por­tance of prop­er par­ent­ing as the coun­try bears the ef­fects of a na­tion­al state of emer­gency. But for those who take the time to read this ar­ti­cle, you'll find that the ex­e­cu­tion of prop­er par­ent­ing tech­niques aids in elim­i­nat­ing the de­sire of our na­tion's young peo­ple to as­so­ciate them­selves with gangs.

In­tro­duc­ing TTIPS

Do­ri­an Porter is the as­sis­tant pro­gramme co-or­di­na­tor at an or­gan­i­sa­tion known as the Trinidad and To­ba­go In­no­v­a­tive Par­ent­ing Sup­port (TTIPS). It's a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Ari­ma that as­sists in em­pow­er­ing, in­form­ing and en­cour­ag­ing in­no­v­a­tive par­ent­ing for the up­lift­ment of the na­tion's chil­dren and es­sen­tial­ly, the chil­dren of the world. Porter, in a chat with the T&T Guardian four days af­ter the na­tion­al state of emer­gency was de­clared, said she was not con­vinced that there were a whole lot of youths in T&T en­gaged in gang and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties. She high­light­ed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion worked close­ly with a num­ber of young peo­ple via work­shops, schools and coun­sel­ing pro­grammes, and she had ob­served that there were a lot of pos­i­tive things hap­pen­ing with young peo­ple at this time.

Deal­ing with bul­ly­ing at schools

"One of the things we've been do­ing is prepar­ing young peo­ple who have been mov­ing from the pri­ma­ry to the sec­ondary school sys­tem to deal with the gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and bul­ly­ing. "There has been a lot of work go­ing on in schools with re­spect to bul­ly­ing, which is kind of like a 'spring­board' for the whole gang ac­tiv­i­ty thing," she ex­plained. Porter said a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors con­tributed to chil­dren be­hav­ing like bul­lies in and out of the school en­vi­ron­ment. She said some chil­dren be­haved that way when they were not re­al­ly recog­nised or val­i­dat­ed. "Some chil­dren feel like they have to demon­strate that kind of be­hav­iour that will say, 'Ok, I am be­ing seen. I am be­ing re­spect­ed.' If chil­dren are not be­ing al­lowed to have a lev­el of con­trol over their own lives, for in­stance with sim­ple things like giv­ing them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make choic­es, hav­ing con­ver­sa­tions with them and help­ing them to un­der­stand what their re­spon­si­bil­i­ties are and where your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a par­ent lies, we will find that this kind of be­hav­iour will arise," said Porter. She ex­plained that some very im­por­tant par­ent to child prac­tices in­clud­ed set­ting rules in the home, es­tab­lish­ing goals, help­ing chil­dren to un­der­stand re­spect and re­spect­ing rules in the home. She high­light­ed that the child who felt that he or she was not giv­en the chance to ex­press his or her views in the home or make some de­ci­sions on their own, would more than like­ly demon­strate that kind of re­bel­lion, act­ing it out via bul­ly­ing in most in­stances.

Un­der­stand­ing chil­dren

Porter re­vealed that the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­cent­ly em­barked on a few ses­sions of so­cial and emo­tion­al learn­ing at schools. She said what they found was that when they went to schools, most of the ed­u­ca­tors iden­ti­fied the chil­dren they thought were the "trou­ble­mak­ers," and in turn left out those they deemed to be qui­et. She said the qui­et chil­dren were of­ten the chil­dren who would fall through the cracks, as in most in­stances be­cause they were deemed qui­et, they were au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be­lieved to be the good ones." "It's not that they are bad, but they are not be­ing giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­press them­selves, so they don't even know how to ex­press how they are feel­ing. "These chil­dren car­ry around a sup­pressed feel­ing with them, whether it's anx­i­ety, fear, low ex­pec­ta­tion. What­ev­er it is that child may not be able to ex­press, it would af­fect his or her re­la­tion­ship with oth­er chil­dren in the school." She said be­ing qui­et was not nec­es­sar­i­ly healthy, as chil­dren were sup­posed to be in­ter­ac­tive with each oth­er. A qui­et at­ti­tude, she said, was of­ten mis­rep­re­sent­ed for good be­hav­iour, but was some­thing that left such a child to suf­fer with­in and pos­si­bly be eas­i­ly led in­to the gang lifestyle.

The im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ca­tion

At TTIPS, Porter said, they sub­scribed com­mu­ni­ca­tion as a tool to be used at home. "Par­ents re­al­ly need to have re­al one on one con­ver­sa­tions with their chil­dren all the time, and par­ents need to un­der­stand that they are al­ways need­ed, even when their chil­dren make that tran­si­tion from pri­ma­ry school to sec­ondary school," Porter stressed. Adding that set­ting bound­aries was some­thing that chil­dren not on­ly need­ed, but of­ten­times want­ed, Porter en­cour­aged par­ents to set time lim­its for go­ing out and com­ing in, and sched­ules for do­ing chores, all of which would aid in the child's de­vel­op­ment as a re­spon­si­ble ado­les­cent. "We have to try to avoid the in­struc­tive kind of com­mu­ni­ca­tions where we bark com­mands at our chil­dren, as com­pared to en­gag­ing them," she urged. She said that type of par­ent­ing was of­ten passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion and had be­come a cul­tur­al stig­ma. "Be­cause we may not have the in­for­ma­tion to do some­thing dif­fer­ent we would be­lieve that that's the way for it to be done, but if we are taught some­thing else, it is then up to us as the par­ents to try some­thing new, some­thing dif­fer­ent," she hint­ed.

To learn more about TTIPS or to as­sist the or­gan­i­sa­tion in any way, call 664-1520.