Melville Cooke
Within seven days, I have been to two places where there was a high concentration of children, the first being this year's National Pantomime last Thursday and the annual student intake for a primary school in St. Andrew.
Both places were, of course, frustratingly filled with the antics of what my colleague Tanya Batson-Savage refers to in her reviews of 'G' rated movies to an audience of many little ones as 'ankle-biters'.
It was not, however, the children who infuriated me at both places, but a few adults.
I heard the slap a little boy near to the stage received from the balcony at The Ward.
I looked over in time to see him at the receiving end of another blow from a heavyset woman, accompanied by a screeched command to "galang an' no dweet again!"
I saw more red than King Zu Zu when faced with the claims of the Covitches.
Then yesterday, there were the few parents or guardians who sporadically slapped their charges in full view of hordes of other adults and children, one young woman instructing the child she had just slapped the crap out of to 'tap de bawlin'!
It is these parents and guardians who should be sent to detention and made to write 'I shall not be a stupid slapper' 500 times in alternating white and red chalk on the blackboard.
What especially galled me was the quick glances the adults who delivered these heavy blows to the children's sense of self and pride shot around after their mighty contributions to nation building, the air of satisfaction they sat back with after single-handedly shaping the nation's youth into a fine set of young people.
They looked around for attention and approval, they were pleased to be seen delivering discipline, as they saw it.
They were show-offs and cruel persons, all of them.
NO PRIVACY
To hit a child in public is not only unnecessary, it is downright wicked. It is often a public overcompensation for the private lack of parenthood, a public display to say 'yes, I am doing my duty to the welfare of mankind', while doing nothing to guide the child where it really counts, in the privacy of the home.
Punishment should be delivered privately, praise should be lavished publicly, but we have many adults who seem to believe that earning the admiring glance of a similarly mentally challenged grown-up by battering their child in public is the next best thing to winning the Lotto.
Then, they wonder why their children grow up with low self-esteem and little confidence (and they are the same ones who say 'me no know why de bway no hopen im mout' an' talk') or aggressive and cruel.
It is instructive that in the cases I saw the blows were delivered by women and I know that, in the absence of many fathers, many females are at their wits end in guiding children, especially boys.
I also know that many a sperm donor justifies his being a father after the extended absence following the spasm and delivery of the teaspoon of milky looking stuff by 'putting it on'.
However, I do know, also, that pulling a child to a private place and administering punishment does not soften the physical blow to the child. It is the mental battering that publicity brings which enrages me.
I also know that the solemn promise of public chastisement is very, very effective and is enough to take care of my two children in their more exuberant moments.
Public display of a strong hand, all for the gratification of the parent or guardian, is so, so wrong.
Truth be told, many times it is the adults who need a strapping.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
