Par­ent­ing prac­tices have changed rad­i­cal­ly in the last 50 years, from strict dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an, to to­day’s per­mis­sive­ness, bor­der­ing in some cas­es on in­dul­gence, with all sorts of vari­a­tions thrown in. There are par­ents who lock their un­der-fives in the bed­room at night and refuse to open the door un­til dawn so “they can have some time for them­selves.” There are par­ents who al­low their teenage child “space” when­ev­er she throws a tantrum and refuse to dis­cuss it.

Apart from the dif­fer­ent trends in dis­ci­plin­ing, most of which have been around for such a short pe­ri­od that the ef­fects won’t be known for a gen­er­a­tion, the com­ments moth­ers make about par­ent­ing prac­tices in their coun­tries are in­ter­est­ing.

The Nordic coun­tries place great em­pha­sis on de­vel­op­ing in­de­pen­dence un­der gen­tle parental guid­ance. They al­so be­lieve out­door play, in­de­pen­dent of adults, is the way to go.

In Nor­way, Swe­den, Ice­land and Den­mark, that starts from birth. Putting the ba­by out­side to sleep is nor­mal. It helps ba­bies sleep and it’s some­thing that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans might adopt. In 1997, in New York, a Dan­ish cou­ple got in­to trou­ble with the law when they left their sleep­ing ba­by in a pram on the side­walk out­side a cafe while they went in to have cof­fee. It was the norm for them to do so back home. It’s con­sid­ered child abuse in the US and the moth­er was jailed for 36 hours and the ba­by briefly placed in a fos­ter home be­fore good sense set­tled the in­ci­dent.

On the oth­er hand, in Japan, it’s con­sid­ered child abuse if you let your ba­by “cry it out,” as many Amer­i­can in­flu­encers sug­gest par­ents do for “sleep train­ing.” Sleep train­ing is un­heard of in Japan and the idea of leav­ing a ba­by to cry, on pur­pose, is un­think­able.

In Swe­den, there is huge em­pha­sis on breast­feed­ing and cosleep­ing. Sleep train­ing is a big no-no and many al­so see it as a form of child abuse. Cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment is for­bid­den by law and so­cial­ly un­ac­cept­able. Parental leave is very long, up to two years, and al­most ful­ly paid.

In Nordic coun­tries, the idea of child up­bring­ing is to make the kids in­to func­tion­ing adults, so apart from hav­ing their par­ents around when they need it most, the first two years of life, they get more re­spon­si­bil­i­ty grad­u­al­ly as they grow. Chil­dren walk to school on their own from around age six to eight and are re­spon­si­ble for their own home­work and ed­u­ca­tion from around ten.

In Switzer­land, too, chil­dren walk to school on their own from el­e­men­tary school. They take pub­lic trans­porta­tion on their own.

Swiss par­ents think noth­ing of their chil­dren dis­ap­pear­ing for half the day and turn­ing up for din­ner. Re­minds me of grow­ing up in Wood­brook in the fifties.

In Bal­ti­more in the 70s, I pierced my new­born daugh­ter’s ears for ear­rings at birth. When she went for the first fol­low-up vis­it at a week, the nurse went bal­lis­tic and re­port­ed me to the pae­di­a­tri­cian. Luck­i­ly, he had been ex­posed to Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean cul­ture and calmed her down but she al­ways looked at my wife and me with sus­pi­cion and I no­ticed her ex­am­in­ing our ba­by’s legs, arms and but­tocks in­tent­ly at every vis­it.

Com­pare all this with the com­ments of one mod­ern Amer­i­can moth­er and see what ap­plies to you. “Par­ent­ing here is very over-the-top and I find it ridicu­lous. There’s too much he­li­copter par­ent­ing. Every­thing about par­ent­ing strat­e­gy is up for de­bate and par­ents have strong opin­ions about it. If you say some­thing dif­fer­ent, par­ents get of­fend­ed eas­i­ly and are quick to tell you that you are go­ing to ru­in the child’s life.”

So many par­ents in T&T agree with the he­li­copter par­ent­ing men­tal­i­ty. So many be­lieve that any mis­take they make will per­ma­nent­ly harm the child. That’s non­sense.

Lis­ten to the words of the great Lebanese po­et, Kahlil Gibran: “And a woman who held a babe against her bo­som said, Speak to us of Chil­dren. And he said: Your chil­dren are not your chil­dren.

They are the sons and daugh­ters of Life’s long­ing for it­self. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they be­long not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bod­ies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of to­mor­row which you can­not vis­it, not even in your dreams.”

There are many ways to bring up chil­dren and it’s all right to make oc­ca­sion­al mis­takes.