GET TOUGHER

A community practitioner is recommending that action be taken against parents who are neglecting their responsibility of raising their children.

Head of Pinelands Creative Workshop, Rodney Grant, believes that too many parents are not having a firm hand in raising their offspring, giving them the freedom to “terrorise the society and then sit back and say, ‘not my child’, when you know that your child out there doing nonsense and wouldn’t talk to them”.

“You wouldn’t reel them in. Then you wait until the Police got them and you cry all kind of nonsensical things. Those things got to change. Look at my two children, I use them as examples and [I’m not] rich.

“I grow up in Nelson Street and the Pine, but I take time to talk to my children and to raise them... We take time and we talk to [our] children and show them what is right from wrong. Don’t encourage them to go out there and do folly, it got to stop,” a passionate Grant said.

“All of them things can’t continue. We got to turn this society back and jail the parents that [aren’t] taking care of their children and doing nonsense,” he suggested.

The community practitioner was commenting on the need for parents to play their roles in raising responsible citizens, as he delivered the feature address at an official ceremony to introduce him as the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) candidate for the St. Michael South East Constituency, at the Parkinson Memorial School on Sunday evening.

He also raised concerns about children who should be taking advantage of their education, who appear to be going to school to learn to fight, as though “fighting is a part of the curriculum”.

“I was watching this one and I couldn’t understand what the guy was saying. I thought he was saying ‘fight and get lunch’, but when I catch myself that [wasn’t] what he was saying. He was saying ‘fight and get likes’.

“You understand that folly? ‘Fight man, fight so wunna could get likes.’ So young people fight and they film it, and put in on Facebook so everybody could see. So if a 1 000 people like that, that mean
we got a 1 000 depraved, folly people in Barbados. Nonsense!”

Grant noted that there is no way Barbadians can be contented when looking at the statistics in the courts and the prison, making the point that society needs to be aggressive and assertive in the fight to put an end to violence and crime.

“The trend today is to cheer on fighting. Why [aren’t] we focusing on building our economy and building our businesses? Even focusing on our spirituality?

“When we look at [our] young girls, everybody feels it is cool to got on the most ludicrous things... We got to start a movement for change. It hurt me to watch all of this foolishness play out on Facebook. It is not comforting,” he said. (AH)