"I hear parents say 'him born bad'. But, no child is born bad. We must teach them the way to go," said counsellor Faith St Catherine who, at a recent parenting workshop in St Thomas, noted that the negative lessons learnt about parenting from our own mothers and fathers are things to be resisted and changed if our children are not to suffer from them.

It is a well-known saying that children live what they learn, but many adults are unaware that they are practising the not-so-effective lessons in parenting, learnt from the men and women who raised them.

"A lot of parents have issues. If you have had bad relations with your parents, it is very difficult to have good relations with your own child. You need to deal with your issues," St Catherine, who is the mental-health therapist based at the Women's Resource and Outreach Centre in Kingston, said.

According to the counsellor, men and women should not hesitate to seek counselling to heal the hurt of their own childhood.

They should also consciously unlearn methods of discipline which really do not work, although they may have seen generations and the entire community use them.

Our parents

"We learn to be parents by watching our own parents shouting and slapping our siblings and us. If we do not learn another way to discipline or to react to problems, we will do the very same thing," St Catherine stated.

The counsellor also noted that the habit of shaming children into good behaviour is counterproductive.

"A lot of people feel that if they shame the children they will do better," she said, pointing to instances when children are called 'dunce' or 'no good'. "But, if you keep telling them that," she argued, "eventually, they will believe it. Build them up, do not put them down."

- Avia Collinder