PARENTING is one of the most difficult jobs anyone will ever have to do in life. As with other jobs we need to learn to do it. Parent education prepares people for parenthood. The best time for this type of education is before the person becomes a parent. However, even those who are already parents can learn a lot and become better parents through parent education.

Parents are the first and most important teachers of their children. A parent is someone who is responsible for looking after a child or children and may also be an aunt, uncle, grandparent, or other relative. Mothers and fathers or the person who plays the role of the parent have a big part in shaping their child’s physical, mental spiritual and emotional life. This begins even before the child is born.

What your child learns in the first six or seven years of life affects him or her more than what he or she learns at any other stage of life. The child learns most from what he or she sees, hears and experiences with his or her parents and other members of the family and from life in his yard or community.

Every child needs food clothing and shelter to live; but every human being – whether a child or an adult – has other needs. These needs include

. Love and security in order to learn to love others.

. Praise and recognition in order to feel worthwhile.

. New experiences to learn from.

. Responsibility in order to learn to be responsible.

These basic needs must be met in the home in the child’s early years.

Love and security

Sometimes parents think that their children know that they love them without realising that they have to show that they love them. Boys and girls need to feel love and closeness as well as freedom to explore and learn about themselves and their surroundings. They need to hear you say, “I love you” – this also helps them express their own feelings.

Security is about feeling safe, feeling free from fear, feeling a sense of belonging. Every child needs this sense of security to grow and develop in a healthy way.

Small children know that they are dependent on big people (usually parents or relatives) to care for them and to provide food and shelter for them. They are born with that knowledge.

Small children also know that adults can hurt them, can fail to provide for them and can abandon them. They learn this very early in life. Children cry when they are left alone in a strange place because they feel unsafe and insecure. Until they learn that the parent will always come back, they are afraid, because they know they cannot survive without the parent.

Why there should be no spanking of any child at any age

A child who is hit – this includes slapping, boxing, beating, whipping, spanking – by a parent learns several things. He or she learns that violence is the way to solve problems, to get what you want, to correct and to discipline. The child will learn that violence against people who are smaller and weaker is the right way to behave.

When parents hit children, they are teaching them to expect love and violence to go together. Men who beat women have usually been beaten as boys. Women who “take licks” from men, have usually been beaten as girls. Domestic violence is taught and learned in the home. Home is the school where family violence lessons start. In some homes, family violence teaching begins when the pupil is just a few months old.

Everything the child sees, hears, feels, tastes and smells during early childhood shapes him or her for life. It is possible to smell and taste the fear that is associated with many forms of violence

Hitting, especially at an early age, affects the development of the brain at a time when the brain is still being formed. Scientists who have examined the brains of children who were hit or abused have found that they were very different from the brains of children who were given a lot of love and positive attention. Whenever a small child is hit, nerve cells are produced in the brain (that is still growing) to receive and transmit this information. By the time that child is six to 10 years old, the brain has been more or less shaped by everything that has happened to the child. So a child growing up with a lot violence around them and happening to them will develop a brain that is programmed for violence. The child can then become either aggressive or frightened or unhealthy in a number of ways. This will affect all his or her future relationships.

Correcting a child

We often hear people quote the Bible to say “spare the rod and spoil the child.” The rod was used by shepherds minding sheep. It was used when the sheep were about to wander astray to bring them back into the fold. This was done by gently touching them on the side to correct and guide their movements in the direction the shepherd wished them to go. Not even today do sheep minders lash sheep on any part of their body with the rod of correction!

We would do better to remember this line, “thy rod and thy staff shall comfort me”. These two types of sticks were used to help build discipline (in the sense of guiding in the right way), but never to threaten, terrorise, frighten or hurt anyone – sheep or people – particularly not little people.

Where can I get more information or help?

Child Development Agency

A division of the Ministry of Health

Services include:

. Foster care – a substitute family to children in need of care.

. Institutional care – placement of the child in places of safety and children’s homes.

. Adoption – children between age six weeks and 18 years can be adopted.

Headquarters located at 2-4 King Street, Kingston. Tel 948-7206

Child Guidance Clinic

A division of the Ministry of Health

. Provides child mental health services and counselling (child and parent).

Clinics located at Bustamante Hospital for Children, Arthur Wint Drive, Kingston 5; Comprehensive Health Centre, 55 Slipe Pen Rd, Kingston 5; St Jago Park Health Centre, Burke Rd, Spanish Town.

Jamaica Foundation for Children

. Provides telephone counselling and referrals to children and parents ‘One 2 One’.

The parenting hotline: Tel: 977-6738; toll free 1-888-991-512.

‘Friends’ – children’s hotline, Tel: 977-5754 or toll free 1-888-991-4606

Article contributed by Althea Bailey, lecturer, Department of Community Health & Psychiatry, UWI Mona