POPULATION-BARBADOS: Parent Abuse on the Rise

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Cara Mason

BRIDGETOWN, May 12 1998 (IPS) - Jane Brooks goes into her room, sits on the bed where she breaks down in tears.

Minutes later, like a raging bull, the 13 year old girl charges towards her mother, shakes her like a baby’s rattle and bangs her head against the wall.

The mother, who is barely trying to hold her family together, working as a secretary at a private company here, says she did not know what to do when the incident which caused her to seek medical treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital occurred.

“This was my daughter doing this to me, not a stranger. I couldn’t move. I was in shock. I just didn’t know what to do,” says 37 year old Jo-Lynn.

She and her daughter are now being counselled by professionals.

This incident is similar to one which occurred last week when a 12- year-old girl stabbed her pregnant mother in the back during a dispute. The juvenile, who pleaded guilty in court, was remanded to the Summervale juvenile home for girls.

Parents here were even more outraged when a 22-year-old man attacked his mother, leaving her having to seek medical treatment for an injured arm.

These acts of violence, social workers and others say are becoming far too commonplace in a country which was once known as having a docile population.

Director of Parent Education for Development in Barbados (PAREDOS), a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Marva Springer, says while a number of the cases she has encountered stem from persons on drugs, many others are a result of frustration on the part of both parents and children as well as a lack of parenting skills.

“If parents continue to parent the children the way they were parented years ago something is going to go wrong in this society. Problems occur when parents have not been parenting the children correctly and there is a power struggle when the child becomes an adolescent,” Springer says.

“When the child does not respond or does what the parent wants, the parent retaliates in the usual fashion by saying that they are going to beat the child who (then) will challenge the parent.

“So it isn’t only confrontation in terms of verbal abuse there is also physical abuse because that is all the child has been taught.”

While some social workers agree that the physical disciplinary measures worked in the past, many are now arguing that parents need to look at alternative ways of punishment such as with-holding of privileges. Some are even convinced that if a child lives with violence, he or she will learn to be violent.

“We’re normally called in to deal with relationship problems where the child is saying that the parent does not understand him or her or the parent is saying that the child is not adhering to my rules within the home setting.

“We try to find out the source of the problem, try to deal with both, determine what either is doing wrong and then try to bring them to a common understanding,” says Head of the Juvenile Liaison Scheme, Cheryl Willoughby.

But Springer says her experience is that although in most cases of this nature both child and parent must bear some measure of the blame, she is inclined to apportion most of the blame to parents who she says still do not understand that “being in control does not mean to control”.

“Many people are not taught how to deal with unresolved anger so now everybody decides that the quick fix is to punch back. When we do not teach children how to control their anger that is what happens,” she says.

Springer says when the situation has reached a stage where a child wants to physically harm a parent, it means the parent has lost control.” It then becomes a battle of wits and that is when that parent should contact an agency for help.”

Ikin Alleyne, Deputy Chief Probation Officer says her department sees an average of 25 children per day. In many of these cases the parents are at their wits end and do not know where to turn.

“Parents walk off the streets and bring their children here. It’s a common thing. Sometimes the child may be taking marijuana and when the parents speak to them they may be violent and answer back or threaten them. This is when they would bring them in to see us,” Alleyne says.

“We would arrange to see them over a few months and try to help them in an effort to prevent them from coming before the courts,” he adds.

Some 60 percent of the children being seen by the Probation officers are girls. The main problem here, Alleyne says is that these young women insist on defying their parents when it comes to staying out late at nights and some refuse to attend school. These forms of behaviour lead to confrontation which often become physical.

For now the government is trying to put in place more counselling sessions for both parents and children in an effort to stem this new development.