On the eve of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tion, the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty of T&T plead­ed with par­ents to de­sist from in­flict­ing emo­tion­al abuse on pupils who are fac­ing in­tense pres­sure at this time, as this could ad­verse­ly af­fect them in their adult years.

The au­thor­i­ty tried to sen­si­tise and ed­u­cate the pub­lic about emo­tion­al abuse dur­ing a press con­fer­ence on Mon­day at its Port-of-Spain of­fice which was at­tend­ed by its chair­man Hanif Ben­jamin, CEO Safiya Noel and man­ag­er reg­istry and in­ves­ti­ga­tion Rhon­da Gre­goire-Roopchan.

Though peo­ple re­port to the au­thor­i­ty phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse as well as ne­glect, Noel said for this month, they will fo­cus on emo­tion­al abuse which is hard to de­tect and un­der-re­port­ed.

The role of the au­thor­i­ty is to pro­vide care and pro­tec­tion of chil­dren.

Noel said par­ents have a ten­den­cy to call their chil­dren in­sult­ing and deroga­to­ry names is a form of emo­tion­al abuse.

She ap­pealed to par­ents not to name shame, de­grade or ver­bal­ly abuse their chil­dren who are due to sit the SEA ex­am on Thurs­day.

"If they do not pass for their first choice, there is a to­mor­row. It does not mean you have a stu­pid child. This time could be dif­fi­cult for par­ents and chil­dren and of­ten par­ents find them­selves abus­ing their chil­dren in try­ing to cause them to be suc­cess­ful. Do not put out your frus­tra­tion on your chil­dren."

Such par­ents are urged to utilise self-con­trol, seek anger man­age­ment and psy­cho­log­i­cal help, Noel said, as she re­mind­ed them of their pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which is to ed­u­cate and pro­tect chil­dren from harm.

"If you do not know how to man­age your­self and reg­u­late your be­hav­iour there will be no way you can teach that to your chil­dren."

Da­ta has shown that bi­o­log­i­cal par­ents are the biggest al­leged per­pe­tra­tors of abuse.

"Some­times peo­ple are so em­bar­rassed they mask a lot of is­sues that are tak­ing place in the fam­i­ly and re­al­ly they ought to be get­ting help. Par­ents stop the mask­ing. The price is too great for a pris­tine im­age."

Though emo­tion­al abuse was not heav­i­ly re­port­ed, Noel called on cit­i­zens who know of cas­es to re­port anony­mous­ly to the au­thor­i­ty.

"It does not even show any ma­jor signs of in­crease. But what we do see when we start to in­ves­ti­gate re­ports that there is ev­i­dence that the child has been a vic­tim of psy­cho­log­i­cal or emo­tion­al abuse for a very long time," Noel said.

Emo­tion­al abuse in­volves dis­miss­ing a child's emo­tion­al re­ac­tion, sham­ing, hu­mil­i­at­ing, re­ject­ing, be­lit­tling, blam­ing, be­rat­ing, in­sult­ing, threat­en­ing, crit­i­cis­ing and call­ing a child or chil­dren names.

Signs of emo­tion­al abuse in chil­dren are ag­gres­sive and re­gres­sive be­hav­iour, with­draw­al, bed­wet­ting, con­stant di­ar­rhoea, self-harm, chron­ic cry­ing, fail­ure to go out­side and play.

As a child, Ben­jamin said many of us can still re­call the bad things told to us as chil­dren which can change life's out­look.

"If we are af­fect­ed in our ear­ly child­hood...those phas­es that we would have dif­fi­cul­ty lat­er on in life and I think that goes through to­day. We are af­fect­ed by our child­hood ex­pe­ri­ence whether good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent."

He agreed that adults to­day who were af­fect­ed as a child still deal with some form of "some­thing."

Ben­jamin stat­ed that the au­thor­i­ty has been meet­ing with stake­hold­ers in or­der to work on the same page in the in­ter­est of chil­dren.

Noel said the Au­thor­i­ty would al­so in­ter­vene in non-na­tion­als chil­dren.

She al­so spoke about four Venezue­lan chil­dren who were re­cent­ly sep­a­rat­ed from their par­ents who en­tered T&T il­le­gal­ly.

In such cas­es, Noel said the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion would con­tact the au­thor­i­ty to as­sist in car­ing for those chil­dren un­til the adults are re­leased.

"Yes, we have seen an in­crease in those types of re­quest from the im­mi­gra­tion unit and we do our best to fa­cil­i­tate. We need more spaces in the sys­tem to house chil­dren. But what we re­al­ly need is for chil­dren to re­main with fam­i­lies."

Re­ports of child abuse can be made at 800-2014 or 996 with the strictest con­fi­den­tial­i­ty.