Children in the Caribbean (and the world): innocent enthusiasm

Recently I have been listening, reading and experiencing some inspirational and motivational teachings. This started around 2006 when I was feeling a bit down and lost. almost ten years later, I am still learning. But the difference is that now I understand all the teachings much better. and by teachings I mean everything, From motivational speakers to the Bible to Zen. I lay my hands on anything I can get.
What I found was that there is a thread that holds all these different teachings together. It is that you yourself are the architect of your life. The most important thing/tool you have are your thoughts. And envisioning things is key. Whether positive or negative, whatever you envision will in some way come true.
So what has all this to do with the Caribbean you ask? Listening to a motivational podcast I remembered a story about this kid (who is an adult now with children of his own), which is a 'textbook" case of all what I have encountered and learned.

The Caribbean, just like any place in the world, can be challenging for kids to grow up in. There are many things holding us back: poverty, abuse, discrimination etc. etc. I myself have experienced some of it, but my problems fade away compared to the story I am about to share.

When I was little there was a boy living in my neighborhood. He was about 2 years younger than me. He came from a very humble background, raised by a single mother. They lived on "welfare" and were considered poor. Having the Dutch education system on Aruba, where background does not play a big role, we visited the same elementary school. There I remember this kid went through a rough time. He was bullied by both the other children and the teachers. At the time I did not realize it was bullying, but thought it was quite funny. Also in the neighborhood, he was looked down on and bullied. I'll spare you the details, but it resulted him transferring to another school. Later I understood that there he flourished and became a good student.
Apart from knowing him from school, we became kind of neighborhood friends. He would come to our house to play, and eventually he came every day. My mother especially took him under her wing, as she saw potential in him and felt a great deal of compassion. Being little myself, I was not able to understand and became quite jealous of this. Nevertheless, we became friends and this relationship lasted for a few years, until he turned about 12 and one of his relatives took him under their wing. In a nutshell, back then he was considered to not amount to much in life.

The remarkable thing that stuck with me was that he always had great visions for himself. For example he explained to us how he dealt with aggressive dogs attacking him when walking through the fields to get to our house. He would sit down and imagined he was Bruce Lee, and then looked at the dogs and say: "Come and get it". The dogs would growl and bark, but not attack him anymore. Back then we just laughed at this, but now 27 years later....I understand the power of what he at age 9 did. But the most powerful and amazing thing he did, what convinced me that positive thinking, your thoughts and envisioning can do, was how he played.
In a field next to our house there was a little junkyard with large construction trucks. He would sit in those trucks almost everyday and image himself driving them and working. Some days we could hear him playing in the trucks and envisioning himself as a real truck driver.

After he changed schools and went on to spend more time with his relatives, we kind of lost touch. about 3 years ago I found him back on Facebook and also saw articles about him in the local newspaper. And this is the amazing part. He is actually now working with large trucks in a leadership position. I often see articles about him fighting for his organization and getting things accomplished for his people. And I think people now around him have a great image and appreciation for him. If I compare this to when he was 8-9 years old....I think back then no one would have believed that this would or could be his future. Some of the kids who bullied him, are actually less successful than him. I wonder what his elementary school teachers think of this if they realize.

So what I am trying to say in this piece is that no matter where you are from, your background or situation. With the right attitude and thoughts, you can achieve a lot. Of course you will need some help from now and again, but believe me, this help is also a result of your thinking. So to all kids in the Caribbean (also the rest of the world): don't let your surroundings and circumstances hold you back. Be brave, keep dreaming and recognize help when it reaches you. The world can be quite forgiving and compassionate. I have learned through some hard times as well, and now look at children in a whole other way.....great potential and innocent enthusiasm....

Traditional Caribbean upbringing....should we return to this?

Next month I will become a dad and over the last couple of months I have been pondering on how to raise our child. Therefore the inspiration for this blog.

My Wife is from the Dominican Republic and I am from Aruba, so both of us have a Caribbean background and upbringing. However, we have been living for some years now in Europe and have adapted a bit to this lifestyle and culture. The children in Europe are brought up quite free and modern, and I am not sure I agree with it all the time. So lets revisit our own childhood and reminisce about the values we have been taught by our parents and family. I will limit this to the age of 5 to 10 years old because I think that that is the most important period where your parents had the most influence on you as a growing little person. For me this period ranged from the mid 1981 to 1986.

For us children of that period the most important people teaching us values and providing guidance and behavior corrections were: Father, Mother, Grandparents, Aunts, uncles, older cousins (older than 18, which in the Caribbean is normal, because our grandparents had up to 10 children so your the age difference between your parents and  your oldest uncle/aunt could be up to 10 years).
Outside of the family sphere, teachers also had a big influence and enjoyed a great deal of respect by both you and your parents.

One of the most important things we were taught was that you always respect your elders. This included never talking back. I remember the phrase: when the big coins speak, the small change shuts up (typical Aruban saying: ora placa grandi papia, placa chikito ta keda keto)
And when we did want to say or ask something we had to address them with either their family title followed by their name. For example: Aunti Judith, may I.... And when it was not family you used Sir or Miss/Mrs. followed by their name. These rules were also applied in school when communicating with teachers.
Also elder family members of your friends were spoken to in this way (when you were in their yard, playing, ripping out their plants and drinking water directly from their garden hose or water tap sticking out of the ground at the back of their house).
And if memory serves me well.....even the village drunks and hobo's were treated with a certain respect...(whenever you got caught by them after yelling crazy things at them while hiding in the bushes).

Having covered the basics on how to speak to people when allowed to speak to them, we get to the language you are allowed to use. In these days I agree that it is difficult for parents to monitor and try to get their children not to use profanity. It is all around us and seems to have become standard lingo. But back in the day.....I remember our school teachers washing our mouths with soap (for real). and at home the ol' belt, rubber flip-flop or flat of a hand came into the equation. Sometimes it as enough to just show us these props and we would know what to do....shut up and apologize (and run away outside and play....far away).

There are many other things that you might have experienced or miss in this short blog about these values we were given by our peers. There is however, one, which I have struggled with as a child and still struggle a bit with as an adult. And I am not sure how I will tackle this with the upbringing of my own child. This was the fact that we were not allowed (or expected) to question anything. For me this was a problem in elementary school, where early on I started questioning certain things we were taught or told. At this point I understand that for a child around 5 years old this is normal behavior. This is when we start making sense out of the world around us and ask questions to try and make sense out of it all. And as mentioned before, it was not expected that we went on and on in those days. We would have to accept and make do with the one answer we were provided with. Because of course, we could not reply with an additional question, because....one does not talk back to grown-ups.
On the other hand, when sometimes I see toddlers or children talk to grown-ups nowadays and being replied to as if they were equal conversational partners. One can argue that the boundary between childhood curiosity and a child being ill mannered, is fading. Where do you draw the line? At this point I think that I will engage my child in a "grown-up" way, but making clear that when daddy says its enough.....it is enough (no need to props to evoke fear).

If you have any stories or things based on this topic to share, please do so. I think it can be very useful for us to learn from each other and celebrate wisdom we posses handed over to us from our elders.