By Reverend Stephen-Claude Hyatt,
Contributor
A POTTER can take a formless mass of clay, add water in the proper amounts, and shape it into a beautiful vessel. Similarly, parents shape a child's view, both of self and the world around. With love, guidance and discipline, the child should develop into a stable well-rounded adult.
All too often, however, abusive parents form the impressions on a child's mind and heart. Emotional, physical and sexual abuse often times create distorted thinking patterns that become firmly set and difficult to reshape. In several of our high schools, we have shells of human beings sitting in classes, battered, bruised and being made to feel worthless by primarily their parents/guardians.
These shells, which we refer to as students, are at times not able to function, because of the abuses dealt to them, mainly by their parents. The sad thing is that these very parents, more than anyone else, expect their son or daughter to be the best and do their best. They say things like, "mi gi di bwoy everyting, and im still nah perform, mi done wid im." Upon inquiring what is it that they have given this boy, the response is usually material; that is, clothes, books, food etc., rarely love, attention and quality time. The only thing emotionally that the child has received is curse words and negative prophesies about himself/herself, which in time become self-fulfilling prophesies.
Emotional abuse
"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words cannot harm me." This is a misleading advise we often give to our children, and what it does is aid them in hiding the hurt they have suffered as a result of negative words. The defense mechanism of repression is a tool used by so many of our children, as they fear the hurt that remembering will cause, or worst, the abuse they will receive if they dare to speak about the knife like words used at them. Words can hit harder than stones, and the effects or the bruises are usually left untreated because they are not readily seen. Many of our children are not able to learn because of the emotional baggage they carry around; particularly those inflicted by parents/guardians.
"I do not remember a day when my mother did not tell me she wished I had never been born," says Jason (not his real name). Michael (not his real name) recalls, "I was always made to believe that I was bad or not good enough, no matter how I tried; therefore, I just stopped trying." Children will usually believe what is said against them. Children do live what they learn. If a boy is constantly called stupid, then he may eventually feel stupid. Call a girl worthless, and she may believe just that. Children have a limited perspective, and often cannot discern that which is accurate from that which is abusively exaggerated or false.
I am sick of hearing about children taking their lives because of fear of abuse, or simply because they are tired of being abused. I am not sure which affects a child more, the horrible battering they receive from 'loved ones' or the disgusting words hurled at them day after day. Yet we wonder why is it that our children are so violent. Why is it that the concept of peace so easily eludes them?
Just look around at what we are teaching, and the answer will come blazing through. It is amazing how easily and without effort it takes a parent or a teacher (parent at school) to hurl words of hurt and abuse at children. It takes little to nothing for a child to be classed as a "worthless good for nothing" who will not achieve much.
Physical abuse
Physical abuse of children in Jamaica is becoming a norm, sad to say. We hear of the widespread abuse children suffer at the hands of 'insane' parents/-guardians, almost everyday. It is alarming the ways parents choose to discipline a child. If a child is caught in the act of stealing, there have been cases where the hand of the child is placed over an open burner on the stove. Children have had their tongues peppered or tied because they are believed to be lying. One young man speaks of the horror of having his testicles grabbed by his father, and squeezed until he wetted himself, because he was thought to be lying. This young man was about 16 at the time, and still has a bitter hatred for his father, even now that he is an adult.
Another young man recalls his physically abusive father. "He would start punching me until he would have me up against the wall. He would keep pounding me so hard that I would be dazed. The scariest part was not knowing what would provoke his outburst." These are the words of a boy age 15, now living on the streets of Kingston, who thinks of himself as always wrong and will never be able to succeed, because of his abusive father.
The most alarming part of physical abuse is that the abusers in most instances believe they are correct to have reacted in the way they have. I have heard parents, with pride and a sense of accomplishment, speak in graphic terms of how they punished their children. They use electric wire, pot covers, shoes, tree branches, bottles, stones and belt buckle, just to name a few. Others who want to be more creative cut strips of car tyre and soak same in peppered water, then put it in the sun to dry, or they tie the child in a nest of ants, or just sit and pinch them all over the body.
The book Strong at the Broken Places notes that childhood physical abuse is comparable to "being in a car accident every day, every week or every month". Such abuse teaches a child that the world is unsafe and that no one can be trusted. Additionally, violence often begets violence. The Theologian Paul Ofriere in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed says, those who are oppressed constantly, will eventually become the oppressor if not helped. "If children are not protected from their abusers", warns Time Magazine, "then the public will one day have to be protected from the children." This is a little too late for Jamaica, as we have already begun to feel the negative effects of abused children.
Then there are those who are physically abused to death. I think of the father in rural Jamaica who beat his four-year-old son to death for leaving his bag at school. Then there is the mother, said to have been mentally challenged, accused of stabbing her son, age twelve, to death. Upon her husband's return, he saw her stabbing the boy's lifeless body with a pair of scissors. There have been at least three cases since the commencement of the year, of children being beaten to death by parents or guardians. When will the madness stop?
Rev. Stephen-Claude Hyatt is a guidance counsellor.
