Roslyn Car­ring­ton

"I have so many things to be grate­ful for. Every day, I wake up and ex­press grat­i­tude."

Pos­i­tive think­ing from a woman who has spent her life teach­ing oth­ers to think pos­i­tive­ly. Clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist Isol­de Ali Ghent was raised by for­mer High Com­mis­sion­er/Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Her Ex­cel­len­cy, Mrs Shas­tri Ali, back in the glam­our days of diplo­ma­cy. She spent her for­ma­tive years bounc­ing be­tween Trinidad and sev­er­al over­seas post­ings, in­clud­ing Cana­di­an and US cities. Apart from the cul­tur­al ex­po­sure, the ex­pe­ri­ence al­lowed her to ob­serve how an in­flu­en­tial and pow­er­ful woman can man­age ca­reer and fam­i­ly.

"My moth­er was the first fe­male diplo­mat who was mar­ried with chil­dren to be post­ed abroad," she re­flects. "I had a very strong fe­male role mod­el, some­body who re­al­ly pushed in­de­pen­dent think­ing and ca­reer, but al­so fam­i­ly val­ues and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it." At her prac­tice at 39 Ben­gal Street, St James, she of­fers di­ag­nos­tic test­ing and ther­a­py, main­ly to chil­dren over age six. "There are dif­fer­ent rea­sons peo­ple bring chil­dren in for test­ing. Be­hav­iour, learn­ing...some­times be­cause they're gift­ed. Some­times par­ents just want to make sure their ed­u­ca­tion lev­el is cor­rect, or to sup­port their choice of col­lege."

Ali Ghent al­so holds train­ing and par­ent­ing work­shops, and in­di­vid­ual and group ther­a­py ses­sions with teenagers and young adults in col­lab­o­ra­tion with ed­u­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Allyson Hamel-Smith, an­oth­er woman she claims among her role mod­els. Al­so shar­ing of­fice space in the small, old-fash­ioned house are psy­chol­o­gist Kim Ros­tant and so­cial work­er, Greer Gros­berg. Ali Ghent, who spends much of her time cater­ing to the needs of deeply trou­bled chil­dren, is mar­ried with two young ones of her own, ages five and eight. Like any oth­er work­ing moth­er, she starts her days by run­ning the lunch-bag and school uni­form gaunt­let.

Here, her pro­fes­sion­al know-how stands her in good stead, as she's trained them to do most of their prepa­ra­tions them­selves, spar­ing her­self the fran­ti­crush­ing and yelling that char­ac­teris­es ear­ly morn­ing for most of us. "I do in­spec­tion, though," she qual­i­fies. At the of­fice, she re­serves her morn­ings for test­ing her young clients, since they're usu­al­ly well-rest­ed and re­cep­tive at that time. Af­ter­noons find her ob­serv­ing the chil­dren in their nat­ur­al habi­tat, the class­room, con­duct­ing teacher work­shops, or do­ing com­pa­ny train­ing. Her group ses­sions are play­group-friend­ly, with art, plas­ticene, and struc­tured and un­struc­tured ses­sions that help with emo­tion­al lit­er­a­cy and be­hav­iour man­age­ment.

"We try to bring about aware­ness of why they do what they do, and cre­ate a sense of ac­count­abil­i­ty. The kids get a lot out of it. They learn a lot, and we learn from them." To par­ents who think their child has a prob­lem, Ali Ghent ad­vis­es look­ing at main ar­eas such as school and home. "What has the teacher no­ticed? What have you no­ticed?" Many chil­dren with is­sues have trou­ble sit­ting still in class, jeop­ar­dis­ing their own learn­ing while dis­rupt­ing oth­ers. Tum­my aches and headaches can be a warn­ing sign of anx­i­ety. The prob­lem isn't al­ways a learn­ing dis­or­der such as dyslex­ia, ADD or AD­HD; some­times, it may be as sim­ple as bul­ly­ing by a class­mate.

Ag­gra­vat­ing un­der­ly­ing learn­ing is­sues is the fact that the T&T sys­tem is not age-ap­pro­pri­ate, and the ex­ces­sive de­mands of prepa­ra­tion for SEA are too weighty for young shoul­ders. "The SEA is a gi­ant race, and on­ly 10 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion will get in­to the best spots." The cost of psy­cho­log­i­cal ser­vices for chil­dren may be out of the reach of some par­ents, but there are NGOs such as the Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence and groups like Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion and Caribbean Kids and Fam­i­lies Ther­a­py Or­gan­i­sa­tion who can pro­vide them free or at a re­duced cost. The Dyslex­ia As­so­ci­a­tion is al­so a great re­source, even for kids who aren't dyslex­ic.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion's Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices have al­so be­come proac­tive in help­ing chil­dren get di­ag­noses and fol­low-up sup­port. Ali Ghent ac­knowl­edges the in­ad­e­qua­cies in the sys­tem, but is cer­tain that more re­sources will be­come avail­able in the near fu­ture. "We don't have much, but at least we have. Oth­er Caribbean coun­tries have noth­ing. And peo­ple who go abroad to train are com­ing back in­to these help­ing po­si­tions. These are very in­ter­est­ing fields." She man­ages to bal­ance the stress­es of work and fam­i­ly by main­tain­ing a prag­mat­ic out­look. "You take lit­tle snip­pets of life. Women who give every­thing to ca­reer and fam­i­ly and leave noth­ing for them­selves burn out.

If you do not take care of your­self, you're not go­ing to be good to any­body, be­cause you'll have noth­ing to give." She prac­tices Kun­dali­ni yo­ga, not just for her­self, but al­so to even­tu­al­ly en­hance her prac­tice by in­clud­ing deep-breath­ing ex­er­cis­es in her ther­a­py. "It helps me give some­thing back. It keeps me ground­ed. It's im­por­tant to put aside ego, in or­der to be a ves­sel for heal­ing, and yo­ga has helped with that."

Par­ents can con­tact Isol­de Ali Ghent at 628-4956.