POSITIVE Parenting

WESTERN BUREAU:

Dr Noel Smith Williams is known to many in Montego Bay as an educator and a disciplinarian, but they may not know that he fathered, and 'mothered', his four children from a tender age.

"I did not want to take any chances with my children, so I took the boys from their mother before they were a year old and the girls when they were between three and four months old. My parents were extremely poor, but my grandmother who raised me taught me that I had to get an education, although she could not read," he said.

"When I saw how education transformed my life, I decided I would never take any chances with my children, and decided that whoever was their mother, I must play a major role in giving them an education."

Smith Williams said he assumed a more proactive role in his children's lives because he had a great vision of their possibilities.

"I didn't care what happened, I was determined that all my children must have an education, because education is the only agent that can move poor people's children up the social ladder," he asserted.

Decisive action

His decisive action has paid off. His two sons are graduates of the Sam Sharpe Teachers' College - their father's alma mater - while his eldest daughter is preparing for her associate degree in business administration and the younger is pursuing a BSc in financial accounting at Northern Caribbean University.

Smith Williams recently chaired a discussion entitled 'Transforming Boys into Powerful Men', during a parenting seminar sponsored by the Bank of Nova Scotia.

The event was held at the Montego Bay Community College.

They wanted to find out what has gone wrong with some of the country's boys. They cited broken homes and the absence of fathers from the homes. These factors, they argued, have had a major psychological impact on the nation's boys.

Smith Williams said absentee fathers have had a deleterious effect on families, adding that boys were generally socialised to be tough, but deep down they were emotionally troubled. "Boys are expected to do certain things, which are not expected of girls, so it is a huge expectation on the part of the boys," he said.

He also said that the family was a building block for society. "That means that if the society is wrong, something is wrong with the home, because it is the home that builds the society," he said.