Tag Archives: parenting

I’ve been repeatedly invoking my belief that the clues to adult behaviour lie along the childhood spectrum. When I recollect my past in these columns, the responses tell me that I am touching chords. Many have written and called to share how they too have been affected.  I am always …

“[…] I can see my poor mother now, picking up the rotary phone and dialling the Ministry of Health to try to speak with the minister so she could personally apologise to him. And then she’d shove the phone in my hand to do the same. “This is after she …

“The womb is the home of beginnings.” Leroy Clarke, 2019 What kind of beginnings did 3,777 of our citizens experience between 2014 and 2018? 3,777 young women had children for whom they were neither psychologically nor financially prepared to nurture. 3,777 people have been born of trauma in a society which …

Trinidadians are amazing people. Glorifying each raid led by Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith, we ignore his 21 November prophecy, in Chaguanas, of 100,000 new criminals in the next five years. “It is really important for us… to look at secondary crime prevention… If we do not deal with this …

Back in the 1970’s and 80’s, there was a Family Planning Association (FPA) bumper sticker which reminded the world that “The challenge is not in becoming a father but in being one.” After all, all it takes to have a child is a little rudeness, a little luck, (good or …

The voice on the other end of the line was female but it was neither family nor familiar. And without so much as a perfunctory greeting, she got right to the heart of the matter. “Mr Best, yuh eh have no mudder?” “I beg your pardon?” I said, taken aback. …