The most com­mon type of child abuse oc­curs be­tween eight to ten and the moth­ers are the most com­mon per­pe­tra­tors.Mak­ing the state­ment yes­ter­day was Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Razi­ah Ahmed at the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ap­point­ment let­ters yes­ter­day at the Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, to mem­bers of the Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil for the na­tion­al strate­gic plan for child de­vel­op­ment.

Ahmed quot­ed sta­tis­tics from a 2010 UNICEF re­port which, she said, al­so showed that even more alarm­ing was that sui­cides were most preva­lent be­tween ten to 18 and that more at­tempt­ed sui­cides oc­curred among fe­males. "The study iden­ti­fied that the ma­jor caus­es of sui­cide or at­tempt­ed sui­cides were low self-es­teem, emo­tion­al abuse and in­ad­e­quate lev­els of par­ent-child bond­ing," she said.

Gen­er­al re­search, she added, had shown that the prob­lem of child delin­quen­cy was re­lat­ed to in­ad­e­quate child-rear­ing prac­tices, home dis­cord and child mal­treat­ment.Spe­cif­ic ten­den­cies that pre­cip­i­tat­ed delin­quen­cy in boys be­tween sev­en to 13 were a high lev­el of par­ent-child con­flict, poor mon­i­tor­ing habits in the fam­i­ly and a low lev­el of pos­i­tive in­volve­ment with par­ents, Ahmed said.She added: "The si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­is­tence of low-lev­el mon­i­tor­ing and high lev­els of pun­ish­ment by care­givers are a ma­jor dri­ver to delin­quen­cy.

"Too of­ten we turn a blind eye to the young push­ers on the cor­ner, the girls who fre­quent the malls in 'less than or over-done con­sumes' and the child ven­dors who ought to be in school."Cred­it, how­ev­er, must be giv­en to the par­ents, in­sti­tu­tions, such as church­es and schools, which play an in­te­gral role in the prop­er up­bring­ing of chil­dren, she said.

"I salute those chil­dren and fam­i­lies who rise above var­i­ous so­cio-eco­nom­ic trau­ma of sin­gle par­ent­hood, di­vorce, pover­ty and psy­choso­cial ills and who demon­strate pos­i­tive emo­tion­al in­tel­li­gence," Ahmed added.Echo­ing her sen­ti­ments, Gen­der Min­is­ter Clifton De Coteau, said child de­vel­op­ment lay at the core of hu­man de­vel­op­ment and the build­ing of a strong cit­i­zen­ry.

De Coteau said the Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil was cre­at­ed to se­cure bet­ter de­vel­op­men­tal out­comes for chil­dren and fam­i­lies through ef­fec­tive poli­cies, leg­is­la­tion and pro­grammes.

Mem­bers of the ad­vi­so­ry coun­cil

�2 Gai­etry Par­gass, (chair­man) le­gal con­sul­tant, Gen­der Min­istry.

�2 Mary Fuller­ton, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the AD­HD Foun­da­tion.

�2 Nichol Alves, gen­er­al man­ag­er T&T Autis­tic So­ci­ety.

�2 Ri­ma Mo­hammed, T&T Cham­ber of Com­merce.

�2 Shar­i­fa Ali-Ab­dul­lah, di­rec­tor Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty.

�2 Cheryl Lewis, de­part­ment chair COSTAATT.

Al­marie Jacqure, di­rec­tor DRETCHI.

�2 Fitzher­bert Glenn Niles, pres­i­dent Down Syn­drome Fam­i­ly Net­work.

�2 Dionne Guis­chard, Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion.

Har­ryper­sad Ma­haraj, IRO.

�2 Shar­da Ram­nar­ine, Kan­hai Road En­vi­ron­men­tal, Sports, Cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Chris­tine Ford, KIND.

�2 Sham­la Ma­haraj, dis­abil­i­ty youth am­bas­sador.

Zena Ra­matali, pres­i­dent NPTA.

�2 Lau­ra Davis, so­cial work­er.

Er­ic Lewis, pres­i­dent, St Vin­cent Fer­rer So­ci­ety.

Jawad Aslam, UNICEF.

�2 Karene Nathaniel de Caries, lec­tur­er at UWI.

Tisha Nick­en­ing, project co-or­di­na­tor of Break the Si­lence.

�2 Can­dice Wal­lace-Hen­ry, child de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist.

�2 Fe­mi Williams, child de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist.

�2 Denise Job, YM­CA.

�2 Dionne Guis­chard, Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion.

�2 Danielle Ryan, Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties