President: Children ask me to be their daddy

President: Children ask me to be their daddy
Sunday, June 19 2016

President Anthony Carmona, in his Father’s Day message yesterday revealed some preschool and primary school students visiting President’s House have asked him, “Can you be my daddy?” “It is a reflection of an emotional void in their lives that daddy is not being daddy, or that daddy is simply not around. If you are that kind of daddy, you must do something about it and become the daddy your child wants you to be,” he said.

Carmona said as prosecutor and judge in the criminal courts he has come across “many a man-child standing in the dock charged, often the result of fatherly neglect”.

“They were generally between the ages of 17 to 30. They were from broken homes, battered and beaten down by life, by poverty, by having to be the man of the house at too early an age and to provide food and money for their mother and siblings, because there was simply no father or reliable father-figure in their homes or lives,” he explained.

“Circumstances can force a young man, to be influenced by bad company, be tempted by quick, easy money, become part of a gang, ending up in jail and then his own child is left fatherless and wanting; and a vicious cycle of man’s inhumanity to man becomes a relay race with no end. We fathers can stop that cycle of dysfunction in Trinidad and Tobago by simply being there for our children at all times.

The man-child in crisis is salvageable, and very often he needs the support of those who love him or those who know better.” Carmona said he lives in eternal hope because as a former criminal judge he initiated the Bail Boys Project, “a programme working to take young criminals off the street, empowering them to become law-abiding citizens”. “There is no quick fix but a potent solution is the power that a father can wield with disciplined love,” he added.His wife, Reema Carmona, in her remarks, said children need their fathers in their lives as much as they need their mothers.

“At the end of the day, a child will be better off because of the love, input and inspirational involvement of both parents in his or her life,” she added.

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