Parenting class opens at Yabra Community Policing Centre

Parenting is an endless job that no one gets a chance to study but rather master just from the experience it brings. But today a group of mostly younger parents gathered at the Yabra Community Policing Centre on Caesar Ridge Road to learn some tips on how to become better moms and dads. It’s a three-week long project spearheaded by the Police Department’s Community Policing Unit, headed by Douglas Hyde and the Youth Enhancement Services and is being conducted by Counsellor, Myrna Manzanares.

Myrna Manzanares, Counsellor
“You know we have a lot of young people that are having children and even the adults that have children have a lot of problems that people run into raising their children. I know nobody taught some of us to be parents but today, the way things are, we really need to give pointers and help people to look at the way that they look at things and that children today are different from children when we were growing up. So we have to look at some of the strategies that will work today, that can work today; not hat worked when I was growing up.”

Marion Ali
“What were some of those?”

Myrna Manzanares
“For example, when I was little dehn neva sit down and talk to yoh much. Dehn tell yoh do dis, do dat and den you do it because if yoh start to argue and try to express yoh opinion sometime…now today you cannot do that with youngsters. You need to sit with them and you need to let them know how you feel. You don’t blame them for your feelings but you need to sit with them and let them know what are some of the facts and what are some of the consequences. People used to halla just do it. But why I have to do it? Because I dah yoh ma and I seh so. But now children need to know why, what will happen. If I go down the street and I broke Mr. Man window I might have to pay for it or my parents might have to pay for it and if dehn noh pay for it I might end up going to hostel or going to jail or what have you.”

Erlette Reneau, Outreach Officer, Y.E.S.
“It’s just basically to learn how to be a better parent and father makes a difference. Those are some of the topics that Ms Myrna Manzanares will be facilitating for the next three weeks and the courses are from Mondays and Thursdays from one-thirty to three-thirty.”

Marion Ali
“So at the end of the three weeks, what should they have learned?”

Erlette Reneau
“They will be able to carry the responsibility as a teen mom and at least they’ll know that they have an organisation like Youth Enhancement Services to help them. So at the end of the course if they need additional support, we’ll be there to support them.”

Myrna Manzanares
“Even when parents try very hard, for some parents no matter what you do, no matter how you treat your kids, how you raise them up, children have minds of their own and they make choices. So what we need to do as parents is to make sure that they know all the choices and all of the consequences for all the choices, and if they know it and you know that you did the best you can and they go and do what they weren’t suppose to do, we can still love them but they have to suffer the consequences.”

The programme will continue every Monday and Thursday for the next three weeks. Sessions are free of cost.