We must come together as a Community to help and guide our children. There is a desperate need to bring the church and our values back into the home.With our faith, we can unite with our children of every age in a positive sense of direction. It seems to be our only hope right now. The police are unable to protect any of us without our help to break the cycle where families have refused or grown frightened of taking responsibility for their children’s behavior. We must see the police as our partners for youth today while bringing the church back into our homes so every small child grows up with joy, fellowship and part of the Anguilla community from East to West tomorrow.
We like to point accusing fingers at the society, economic conditions, and the school system, but we must also point our fingers at ourselves – the parents of the children and the friends and relatives who are too frightened to intervene.
These children are our responsibility. When we neglect them, they turn to drugs and alcohol, and gang violence, looking for attention. Some turn to prostitution, and others turn to the streets as a last resort looking for love. It maybe hard to believe that the only hope we have left for our children right now is prayer, but that is the truth. We must examine ourselves and our children’s upbringing upon the altar of Prayer, if we want them to be the change we want to see. Our elders and clergy need to help parents to teach their Children know how to live right. We also need to pray for one another as members of our Community, each, our brother’s keeper.
These are some areas of focus: 1. Let us all live by the Ten Commandments as examples to our children and one another. Remember the one that is forgotten. (Remember to keep the Sabbath Day holy). 2. Show our children the value of hard work from sharing the simple chores in our homes to the lessons of needing to give in order to receive. It is time to replace “something for nothing” with every child to teach all to ask what they must do to earn the things they want, just as the baby learns to say please and thank you. 3. Traditional values of respect for other’s property, listening to parents, teachers and in church, lifting up the joy of learning while not wasting money on the violence on TV, access to video games and the worst of the Internet, movies and music with negative influences. If these are allowed in the home at all, they need to be under parental control. The truth is, if we don’t teach our children to follow Christ and what he taught us all, the world will teach them not to.
Until the world ends, bad company spoils good morals. We live in the world that indwells youths who anchor on the shores of friendship influence to act. It is a rare youth who does not feel “if my friends should be doing it, then why not me?”In those years when a child becomes a man or a woman, the power of peer pressure is strongest. Our challenge as parents and teachers is to insist our children keep friends with those of the best influence and trusted homes, never letting them associate with troubled souls in the first place.
While protecting our own, we must also reach out to the families in need and where multiple jobs or tough times can limit the attention available to the children with the greatest needs. We need to reach out though our churches and the relatives we know to strengthen the net for even those children we may fear have lost their way.
With no gainsay, a youth should be able to live a life of his own and not be caged by his friends’ ways. To curb this, we need to live with accountability as adults and show this value to our children at every turn. No youth should do anything he cannot give a good reason for. Not to fall under peer influence a youth must do the following: 1. Self- discovery A youth that sees himself as a leader of tomorrow would desist from any appearance of violence. The Chances are that a youth could feel inferior or too intimidated to see himself as a successful person in the society due to the environment he finds himself. We must show the way in our actions each day that every self-respecting member of society is a success, no matter his work if it is done with honour and pride. We must listen to our youth and bring them back from feeling inferior or unloved and keep showing him that no home is too humble to bring forth a great man or woman.
“Please note: This is an excerpt from a longer speech prepared for the occasion. Please contact Katherine Webster if you would like the full text at KatherineLWebster@hotmail.com”
(Published without editing by The Anguillian Newspaper.)
