When I was a little girl, my father often told me that we cannot control what people say to us, but we can control how we respond. I thought about that last week after seeing a social media post by former education minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly in response to a statement by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar. The Prime Minister spoke about student misconduct, violence, bullying, indiscipline in schools and the need for stronger parental accountability. It is one’s right to disagree but disagreement should not pull us so far from the real issue that we lose sight of it altogether.
In this case, the issue changed from the behaviour of children and instead showed how adults behave. What troubled me most was not only the tone of the response, but the fact that it came from someone who once had responsibility for the nation’s education system.
If a former education minister can post a sentence like this, “I would tell you where to haul a body part which we all hold dear,” should we expect any better from our students?
People in positions of influence continue to teach, even after they leave office, through their conduct, tone and example. And when you have held influence over the nation’s children, there is an even greater duty to rise above the mess.
We complain that our children are becoming more disrespectful and aggressive. We worry about how they speak to teachers and how they treat one another. But how do we expect children to do better when the adults shaping public life do not always model good behaviour? Too often, we ask children to practise values that many adults seem unwilling to uphold.
One part of the response disturbed me on an even deeper level: the use of dementia as an insult. Dementia is not a joke. It is not a witty line for social media. It is not something to be casually thrown at an opponent because we dislike what they said.
There are families across this country quietly caring for parents and grandparents living with dementia and Alzheimer’s. They know the exhaustion, the heartbreak, and the helplessness that come with watching someone they love slowly change before their eyes. They know what it means to repeat the same answer ten times, to watch memory fade, and to grieve a person who is still physically present but gradually becoming harder to reach. To reduce that painful reality to a cheap political insult is insensitive, careless and deeply unfortunate.
It also says something troubling about the kind of society we are becoming. We speak often about compassion, inclusion and respect, yet when public discourse becomes heated, illness and vulnerability are sometimes the first things we use to lash back. That should concern all of us.
Dementia is a medical condition. It should never be used to score cheap points in a political exchange. When we treat serious illness as something laughable, we insult the person being targeted as well as the families who are quietly carrying that burden every single day.
There is also something else here that we do not discuss enough: ageism. Gadsby-Dolly’s statement, “But you are old, and clearly in early-stage dementia, so all I’ll say to your handlers is come get yuh granny, please,” crosses a line for me. It reflects the way older people are too often dismissed, mocked and treated as though age itself is something shameful.
There was a time when elders were seen as sources of wisdom, experience, and guidance. They were not perfect, but they were valued. Today, that respect has eroded badly. We laugh at old age. We use words like “old” and “granny” not simply as descriptions, but as insults meant to humiliate and diminish.
That is dangerous because it teaches younger generations to see age as something to mock rather than respect. We often act as though growing old is a weakness that belongs to someone else, forgetting that it is a privilege denied to many. If we are fortunate, we too will age and hope to be treated with dignity and patience. Yet, too often, older people are spoken of as burdens or pushed aside, and then we wonder why children show so little respect.
The truth is that children learn from what they see. If adults ridicule age, mock illness and degrade one another in public, we should not be surprised when children do the same.
I am not saying politicians should be protected from criticism. Public figures must be held accountable, and strong debate is part of any healthy democracy. We can challenge a policy strongly without reducing the conversation to insults. We can make our point firmly without being reckless or disrespectful. And if we are truly worried about bullying, indiscipline and the worsening behaviour of our children, then we must also pay attention to the example being set by the adults in public life.
Young people absorb far more than we realise. They listen to what adults say and watch how we behave when we are angry, challenged, or opposed. They observe how we treat age, illness and one another. If we want them to be respectful, thoughtful and disciplined, then those values must first be visible in us. We cannot keep telling children to do better while the adults leading the national conversation do not always do the same.
It cannot be “Do as I say, not as I do.” These younger generations are not going to simply listen and follow. They will turn around and say, “But you do not do this, so why should I?” And then we cannot condemn their behaviour because we did not show them better. A nation cannot raise respectful children on the example of disrespectful adults.
