– we want to raise girl children to understand that violence not acceptable

THE spate at which a number of women in Guyana are being murdered by their husbands or partners, and the number of men, who after committing the act subsequently kill themselves, is of concern for political activist and Working People’s Alliance (WPA) member, Bonita Do Harris.

While Harris notes that some sections of society are proportioning blame on the government, she is of the view that the issue is more of a societal problem, having to do with how children are being raised. She likened the issue too, to that of a generational curse.

According to Harris, the violence our fore-parents experienced during the period of enslavement is still being meted out today with reasons given for justifying it. She wondered what should children think when they hear adults debate corporal punishment, which is actually a debate and discussion of the hurting of children.

“A lot of this, all of this must stop, and until all of us can stop this and in the way we deal with children and when she see other children being hit, we actually step up for those children, we are not going to have any real change. We need to speak to the adults who are hurting children, so we have to make this our business.”

Harris spoke candidly on the subject at an African Cultural Development Association (ACDA)-hosted event on January 30, 2020, in observance of the 14th death anniversary of her former live-in partner, Ronald Waddell, a political activist, journalist, and talk-show host. Waddell was gunned down in the driveway of their seaside home on the Rupert Craig highway, by heavily-armed gunmen. It was reported that the men were tipped off about his arrival home by a hired lookout.

Harris remarked that during the period of enslavement, the children were not ours but a labour force for the plantation owners. However, we are still treating our children as if they are commodities, as if they don’t have feelings, as if they don’t have rights. We are brutalising our children, she lamented.

Continuing she said, “If we raise our boy children with violence …when you brutalise boy children who are powerless to do anything about it, how they are being treated by people who bring them into this world, by people who say they love them, all they end up knowing is to using violence to solve problems.”

“And so, when they become adults and things get out of hand, when there are conflicts or problems, they immediately move to violence on others and violence on themselves. Children do not drop from coconut trees, we produce them, so the problem we are now seeing in society is ours, we have created these problems and we can stop this generational curse,” she pointed out.

Harris recalled an incident in the 1970s, when at a function an aged woman had referred to young people as a “generation of vipers”. Harris said without skipping a beat, she chided the woman by replying, “well we must be having viper grandfather, mommy, daddies and grannies because vipers does produce vipers and if we have a generation of vipers they came from another generation.”

According to her, we can stop this violence by raising our boy children with love, not just saying the words but by our actions – hugging them, kissing them, making them feeling wanted and welcome in this world. Likewise, we can raise our girl children the same way.
She reiterated that girl-children are raised to accept violence at the hand of a mother, grandmother, aunt, father or whoever, that child grows up accepting violence as a norm. That is a child who, as a young woman, could live, sleep and have children with a man, and accept the fact that what he is doing, hitting, threatening and instilling fear in her is acceptable, Harris said.

She noted that the fear of violence, threat to violence and natural violence are first used in the home and is now happening in schools as well. “So when we see children attacking other children, it is because they have come up in homes and in communities where problems are not solved with words but with knives, guns, kicks, blows and whatever else.

“So if we want to raise girl children to understand that it is not acceptable to live or relate to somebody who is driving the fear of God in them, who is threatening you, who is using actually violence at you, we cannot brutalise them. If we do we are normalising it, we are preparing our girl children to be harmed and hurt and killed and we are preparing our boy children to do harm, to hurt and kill when they meet problems,” Harris contended.
In encouraging the use of compassionate language, Harris suggested that when there are problems and conflicts in a family, the language used should be compassionate and in a loving way so as to get children to find other ways to deal with problems rather than rely on violence.

She said that lots of people in society claim that it is the `licks’ they got while growing up that straightened them. For Harris those people should be referred to as `The Better for being beaten brigade”, as she evoked much laughter from the gathering.
“They are the people who cannot even conceive what it feels like to be brought up in love, or knows what it feels like to be brought up in love, what it feels like to be brought up without violence,” she remarked.

Commenting on the word discipline, she said it is frequently used as a verb, for example, `I gone discipline she’, or `what she needs is some discipline’. But Harris explained that discipline is internal. “You need to have discipline in yourself before you can discipline, you cannot discipline anyone as that is violence. We believe in violence, we believe in punishing children, so why should we be surprised if these children either become victims of violence or perpetrators of violence,” she noted.

According to Harris, the main victims of violence are actually children, as they are the ones who get hit all of the time and the reason for hitting is often justified. On the other hand, while it is thought that the main perpetrators of violence are men, it is instead mothers, because women are the ones who spend time with the children.

“I know our lives are hard, I know we have grown up in violence, but we have to find some way of breaking that generational curse so that we do not pass it on to our girl children. The fact that we must accept violence – actual violence, the fear of violence, threats of violence – those three techniques are used to raise children,” Harris said.

“So when we bring up our girl-children without using these three particular techniques, we actually can bring up girl children who can actually smell and taste a perpetrator when they begin to vent. And, if by chance they get involved with somebody who is violent, they will know how to very quietly back away,” she explained.

Also by avoiding the use of the three techniques, we are also letting our boy children learn that when we love and care for somebody, you don’t threaten them, you don’t instill fear in them and you don’t hit them.

She further called on all those who are guilty of hitting humiliating, shaming, and embarrassing children to keep them in line to “stop It”, adding I don’t care how old you are, you need to apologise. She pointed out that, in so doing you are actually teaching your children how to acknowledge wrong doing and apologise.

Also, once a parent says that they are sincerely sorry and make a promise never to hurt a child again, they should ask the child/children to say “Remind me”, whenever they attempt to raise their voice or hand, pick up a stick or belt, “you say to your child remind me,” she said.

Our children know that we break our promises all the time, so they are going to remind you, she added.

On that note, she reminded the gathering that belts are made to hold up a trousers or pants and sticks are not made to hit children. That wild cane that some of us grew up getting licks with when we were in school that is the staff of leadership, it was what the shepherd used to guide his sheep. You will never see a shepherd bring down a stick on the back of his sheep. The hoop at the end of the wild cane was used to retrieve a sheep if ever it fell into a ditch. The shepherd would hook the animal and pull it to safety, she explained.
“So these tools that shepherds had were really intended to protect and guide them [sheep], not intended to hurt them,” she reiterated.

During the last three months of 2019, there were several reported deaths that involved partners as well as incidents where school children used violence against each other. The latter even extended to involving parents and teachers that resulted in the intervention of the police.

Last month, there was an incident in Linden where, during a fight involving two female students, a hunting knife was plunged into the back of one student by the sister of one of the warring pugilists.

And on February 1, 2020 a young man from Timehri, East Bank, Demerara succumbed after he had stabbed his wife then drank a poisonous substance.