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Friday, July 11, 2025

Deyalsingh: T&T can find middle ground to discipline kids

by

20140426

Sec­re­tary of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chi­a­trists of T&T (APTT) Dr Var­ma Deyals­ingh says T&T can find a mid­dle ground in leg­is­la­tion to out­law cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment against chil­dren in homes.He was re­spond­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment on Wednes­day that she would look at leg­is­la­tion to pro­tect chil­dren in homes.

This fol­lowed the re­lease of a video on Face­book of a moth­er re­peat­ed­ly beat­ing her daugh­ter with a belt, while us­ing ob­scene lan­guage, over her in­ap­pro­pri­ate post­ings on so­cial me­dia that has gone vi­ral. Deyals­ingh said, "We need to know if cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment should be out­lawed or if we can come up with a mid­dle ground such as the Cana­di­an sys­tem which al­lows some lee­way in par­ents dis­ci­plin­ing their child.

"The Cana­di­an mod­el has stip­u­la­tions al­low­ing spank­ing for chil­dren old­er than two years and younger than 12 years, but with­out de­vices such as belts, whips or sticks but with the bare hand."In the UK the law states that you can spank a child but not leave a mark; there's a thin line be­tween spank­ing and abuse."He said or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the So­cial Work­ers As­so­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­ca and The Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pe­di­atrics (AAP) were now com­ing out against cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment even in homes.

Not all coun­tries that banned cor­po­ralpun­ish­ment have low crime rate

Deyals­ingh said all this could change as they were look­ing at the Swe­den mod­el and the cor­re­la­tion be­tween the ban on cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and low vi­o­lence.He said while coun­tries such as Swe­den, Ice­land and Ger­many which had banned cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and had low lev­els of crime and vi­o­lence, oth­er coun­tries such as Venezuela, the Con­go and the US had high lev­els of crime and vi­o­lence which may be due to oth­er fac­tors. The anom­aly was Sin­ga­pore which has can­ing and cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but a low crime rate.

Con­nec­tion be­tween child abuse,ne­glect...and abu­sive part­ner lat­er on

Dr Lin­da Hadeed, lec­tur­er in So­cial Work and Me­di­a­tion at UWI said re­search showed that there was a con­nec­tion be­tween child abuse, ne­glect and aban­don­ment, and the choice of a sim­i­lar­ly abu­sive part­ner lat­er on in life.Hadeed said the moth­er stat­ed that the beat­ing was an ex­pres­sion of love, so from the child's point of view phys­i­cal abuse equals love; so that if my part­ner abus­es me, it is be­cause he loves me.

Strong par­ent-child bond need­ed

She said the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship formed the tem­plate by which all oth­er re­la­tion­ships are pat­terned, so par­ents need­ed to be par­tic­u­lar­ly care­ful about pro­vid­ing good enough par­ent­ing.Hadeed said rage was a sign of help­less­ness, and par­ents can eas­i­ly feel over­whelmed.She said all par­ents need­ed ac­cess to prop­er, well-de­vel­oped sup­port sys­tems and so­cial ser­vices.

Hadeed said the sup­port of par­ents, whether a sin­gle par­ent or a cou­ple, was nec­es­sary for the de­vel­op­ment of a well-ad­just­ed child.She said if a child had even one sup­port­ive adult in her camp, the child was like­ly to do well. An ab­sent par­ent, she al­so said, sends the mes­sage to the child that she was not im­por­tant.

Young girls be­ing sex­u­alised

Hadeed said girls were be­ing sex­u­alised at in­creas­ing­ly younger ages and the so­ci­ety can no longer ig­nore that these were the re­sults of win­ing songs with sug­ges­tive lyrics and clothes that cov­er so lit­tle of the body.Hadeed said we need to con­front the fact that chil­dren wit­ness and em­u­late the be­hav­iour of adults, and that we have no one to blame but our­selves.

She said with these two el­e­ments com­bined, a child who was con­scious of her sex­u­al­i­ty and who was al­so long­ing for at­ten­tion, would soon find her­self in thewrong place, with the wong com­pa­ny, or do­ing the wrong things.

Child abuse cuts across all bor­ders

Hadeed said what was in the video was on­ly part of the larg­er prob­lem as abuse wasn't on­ly phys­i­cal; it can al­so be emo­tion­al, ver­bal and psy­cho­log­i­cal, and it can take place in any home, re­gard­less of race, re­li­gion, or so­cioe­co­nom­ic class.She said the phys­i­cal in­juries were tem­po­rary but the psy­cho­log­i­cal in­juries from the hu­mil­i­a­tion would last a lot longer.

Moo­nan: It was a case of child abuse

Mean­while, Child­Line co­or­di­na­tor Mary Moo­nan said what she saw in the video– and from Child­Line's per­spec­tive be­cause they are in­ter­est­ed in child pro­tec­tion–it was vi­o­lent and a case of child abuse.Moo­nan said the video was six min­utes of non-stop beat­ing and the child was lit­er­al­ly beat­en in­to sub­mis­sion while the moth­er al­so used ob­scene lan­guage.

Al­ter­na­tives to vi­o­lent andag­gres­sive pun­ish­ment

She said all those were not good meth­ods to dis­ci­pline a child, and there were al­ter­na­tives and con­se­quences for such ac­tions.She said the beat­ing was a very vi­o­lent and ag­gres­sive form of pun­ish­ment which will cre­ate its own cy­cle of vi­o­lence when that child be­comes an adult.

Need for sex ed­u­ca­tion and­par­ent­ing skills to be taught

Moo­nan said par­ents need­ed to be taught par­ent­ing skills and be trained to ac­quire these skills to be good par­ents in the 21st cen­tu­ry.She said con­sid­er­a­tion should be giv­en to in­tro­duc­ing par­ent­ing class­es in sec­ondary schools as well as sex ed­u­ca­tion to teach them re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, not on­ly fi­nan­cial, but emo­tion­al, time man­age­ment and com­mit­ment-wise, and al­so giv­en a mod­el of what a good par­ent should be.

Moo­nan said she want­ed to en­cour­age sex ed­u­ca­tion as well as par­ent­ing ed­u­ca­tion in schools so that the coun­try could have a bet­ter gen­er­a­tion of par­ents in the next five or ten years.

Enough laws al­ready

Moo­nan said more laws weren't need­ed for child abuse, but en­force­ment was the key.She said when a par­ent ne­glect­ed or abused a child, Child­Line gets such calls, the po­lice have the au­thor­i­ty to in­ves­ti­gate and re­move the child if he is at risk.Moo­nan said the par­ent can al­so be charged if abuse takes place and it would be chal­leng­ing go­ing to the pri­va­cy of a home to en­force new laws.

Where to go for help?

�2 Deyals­ingh said the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment has a par­ent­ing help line where some­one can call for as­sis­tance–800-4775

�2 Moo­nan said for coun­selling, ad­vice and to re­port in­ci­dents of child abuse, call Child­Line, the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty (627-0748); Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vice (627-1163) in the The Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment, the po­lice and oth­er re­sources.

Child­Line's toll free num­ber: 800-4321, it is open 24 hours, 365 days, and all calls are con­fi­den­tial.


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