YOU CANNOT SWEAR for a child.
No matter how much love and understanding you show them; no matter how you try to guide them in the right direction and keep them on that path, you have no guarantee that child will grow up to be a well-adjusted, respectful, kind, thoughtful, loving human being.
That is why all of this recent talk about getting more children to ensure we would have more young people in the years ahead to work and contribute to the National Insurance Scheme to provide for the older folks, is really just old talk. There are no guarantees that the children will grow up and work in Barbados, or if they are here, make a positive contribution by paying their taxes.
What makes this argument hold even less water is the Government’s push for more people to work for themselves by being entrepreneurs. Everybody knows that as soon as people start working for themselves, one of the first things they stop doing is paying the tax man. And if the tax man somehow catches up with them, they find a way to wriggle out of his grip; so everything goes back to square one.
That is just my two cents worth on that, but I really want to talk about my experience with my child and, hopefully, help some people realise no matter how much you try with a child, you just cannot predict how he or she will turn out.
Doted on daughter
I have one daughter. She went through primary and secondary schools without a hiccup, and from early you could see she would be a responsible person, given her manner and respectful behaviour. She meant everything to me and her mum, and all we did was centred around what would be best for her.
But today she does not even speak to us. We are the worst human beings alive just because we tried to direct her along a wholesome path.
Our daughter was always bright and perceptive. She did well at school and barely missed gaining an Exhibition. We always thought she would want to be an accountant or even an actuary as she loved working with numbers and approached her work with the type of serious disposition you would expect from such professionals.
But after meeting a fellow from one of the islands at university, she seemed to lose her ambition and no longer talked about the future. Instead, she just wanted to go out to parties, and even started to drink and smoke.
Her slide was so sudden that we were totally caught flat-footed. We didn’t have a clue why she turned away from everything she knew when she was growing up and embraced what he was putting in her head. We simply didn’t understand her.
What first clued us in that something was amiss was when she cut off all her hair and said she wanted to have natural hair. The child had some lovely long hair. It was so soft and beautiful that people used to think it was an expensive weave, and were surprised when she told them it was her real hair.
Nose ring
Anyway, as much as we didn’t like that, we had to accept it as we recognised she needed to establish her own identity. But that was just the beginning. The next thing she came home with was a septum nose ring – the type that is connected to the skin between the nostrils and resembles something cows wear. Why on earth would anyone want a ring in their nose like that I would never know. So I told her she had to take it out, and she bluntly told me no.
That was the first time my daughter ever refused to do anything that I ordered her to do. So I decided that I would punish her but not allowing her to use the car to drive to university, as well as banned her from going out anywhere for the remainder of the school year. She just stared at me and said nothing.
When her mother and I came home from work that evening, we found her room in a mess and most of her clothes gone. She had left home.
When she finally decided to answer her cellphone she informed us that she was not coming back to live in the prison we called home. We were shocked. Where did that come from? Why this attitude all of a sudden?
I decided that I was going to find her and bring her home and knock some sense into her if I had to. But in discussing it with her godmother, who is a lawyer, she reminded me that my daughter was over 18 years old so was an adult and could do whatever she wanted to – as long as it was within the law – and did not need my permission to do it.
She reminded us that I had turned over her bank account to her with a few thousand dollars on it so she was totally independent.
Her godmother therefore asked us to step back and allow her to reach out to the girl.
She did, and was told by my daughter to butt out of her life. Our daughter completely rejected our home, the Christian values we stood for and everything else we wanted for her and embraced a lifestyle that she was never exposed to prior to going to university.
If anyone had told us that this could happen, we would never have believed them – but it did. That is why I said you can never swear for children don’t care how well you raise them.
