A few weeks ago we watched a news report of a mother who had just lost her home in a Tornado in Oklahoma. She was surrounded by three frightened young children, but this woman continued to lament the loss of her home and prized possessions, while making no reference to her real prized possession – her children, who although scared were alive and well.

It made us wonder how many people really care – as in unconditionally love – for their children. Recent news has been widespread over the past few weeks about the tragic beating death of 14 year-old Martin Lee Anderson at a boot camp in North Florida. Last week another newspaper reported on the frequent incidents of Miami-Dade students being arrested for misbehaving in school. We just cannot condone that this is the way that our children should be treated.

Now, we hasten to add that relating to children in today’s modern and crazy environment is no easy feat. However, this does not allow us to shirk our duties as parents. We have to face and overcome the challenges that make our children act as if they are possessed. It is the role of parents, guardians and teachers to be responsible for and guide the discipline and general behavior pattern of the child.

Unfortunately, the law and the society have virtually removed parents’ rights to discipline their children. However, the society cannot take the sole responsibility for the widespread indiscipline among children. The blatant disrespect toward parents is something that parents have to prevent and in some cases address at a very early age. The more we allow the ‘little things’ to slide, the more likely for them to escalate into incidents that send our children to boot camps or cause them to be carted off by the authorities.

People born in the Caribbean are amazed at how quickly Americans send their children off to special places of external discipline, like boot camps, when they misbehave. This cannot be the way to raise a child. As parents we must be willing and capable to cope with our children, as difficult as they may be.

Back in the Caribbean, corporal punishment within reason is accepted. In America we are told this is child abuse and we run the risk of being drawn off to jail if we spank our children.

However, this same society sees nothing wrong in sending off the children to these so-called boot camps which are run like concentration camps, and where children are beaten, and as in the case of the Bay Boot Camp, beaten to death. Is that not more cruel than spanking the child or keeping him or her in the home subject to parental punishment?

Is it not even more cruel and damaging for the state authorities to be hording children into police vehicles and arresting them for misdemeanors committed at school or other places? There is virtual zero-intolerance by school and police authorities that results in the arrest of thousands of students each year. It’s like there is a collective cry of “We can’t be bothered with this darn child.”

We must appeal for this situation to be corrected. School districts are obligated to find alternatives to the misdemeanor arrests of children. Such arrests cannot continue to be the norm. It becomes a greater concern to us when the reports indicate that 54 percent of the students arrested are black, even though black students constitute only 28 percent of the district’s enrollment in Miami.

This cannot be the way to raise the future generation of America. Undoubtedly, we from the Caribbean are not familiar with institutions like boots camps, or with the police dragging our children off to juvenile jails, unless they have committed serious wrongdoing. If we even sent our children away to boarding schools they were allowed to return to homes of love frequently.

We cannot continue to raise children as if they are social outcasts. If we do, we continue to run the risk of building a damaged society for the future. Boot camps, jails, and detention centers can only scar our children, who will grow up as even worse scarred, hurt adults. This is no way to build future societies.