Parents urged not to hinder children’s self-esteem

A prominent businessman here has advised parents to speak their chidren’s futures into being.

Omroy ‘OT’ Theophilus Mayers, proprietor of Finishing and Furnishing, made the plea recently, as he gave the feature address at the 2015 CLAP FOR FUN summer programme at the National Public Library.{{more}}

“Parents, tell your children what you would like them to become in the future.”

He added that parents tend to lower their children’s self-esteem with negativity and this sometimes hinders the children from succeeding.

Mayers said elders sometimes “blight” the children by the bad things they say about them.

“Some fathers do not attend to their children and mothers would often curse their children telling them they are just like their father, and vice versa. He or she is also innocent of the behaviour of the mother or father, but for the lack of knowledge the elders blight the children and they became just as they say because life and death is in the power of the tongue.”

He added that he wants the negativity to end and children should be called ‘precious jewels.’

“Your children to me are very precious, so I call them precious jewels.”

Mayers disclosed that at the age of seven years, he knew what career path he was interested in.

“At the age of seven, I knew what I wanted to be, because I came from a poor family.”

He said as a little boy, he lived in a thatched house and had many encounters with centipedes and rats dropping out of the thatch when rain came.

He said he knew carpentry was what he was supposed to do in the future and told a story of something that happened when he was seven years old.

“…We used to cook in the yard on three fire stones. This Sunday afternoon, it was raining and one of my biggest sisters went for the pot of food by the fireside. She slipped, fell down and the pot of food rolled away. My mother told us to pick up what we wanted; it was yam, potato and dasheen. My father came home later, he had no food; he started to grumble and mother said, so long I begging you to build a little kitchen and you did not, so this is what happen today. He hit her in the belly and she started to cry. Little seven years old Omroy went between his parents and said mother, do not cry, I will come to build a house for you.”

Mayers became emotional as he was telling the story.

“Every time I rehearse this story the tears that came to my eyes that Sunday does come back and at this moment I feel it coming.”

He referred to the children as young business people, people who are aspiring to do a business.

Mayers mentioned that as young as four years old, he was a trader.

“I use to be in the village picking up mangoes as they dropped, putting them in a pan. As my sisters came home at lunch time, I traded the mangoes for the flesh kind (fish or chicken).”

He said that each child trades in one way or another, when they give something to a friend in return or something else.

Mayers said that he has never worked outside SVG and parents should encourage their children to work here to prevent brain drain.

“I did not go Cuba, Aruba or Canada to work; I stayed in my country to work. One of my sons went overseas to study and I encouraged him to come back home, because if all our bright children stay overseas, they would just develop other people’s country and leave ours undeveloped.”

He also told the children that they do not have to go overseas to shine; they can shine and make a difference in their own country.

“The darker the night is the brighter ah yo light, stay in yo country and help develop it!”

Mayers also encouraged the children to shine in any field of work that they choose.(JF)