The Four Rs of Parenting. Carmen Bynoe Bovell

role, we get a better reaction from the child, and that adds an important dimension to the upbringing of the child.

      Shanice Bovell

      Well, for me as a single parent, parenting has been hard, but I’ve learned through the years that parenting is as hard as you make it. We all have struggles, but as with anything in life, it’s how you handle it. It’s the most precious thing. For me, it’s the most precious thing that I have because I am the one responsible for molding two individuals who will go out into this world and make an impression.

      Parenting has been joyous for me because I have two great sons who have made it so. Even though there have been some scary and tough times, for the most part it has been pure joy raising two boys to become respectful men and teaching them about manhood. I needed to be a good example when teaching them to treat people the way they want to be treated and to respect girls/women the way they would want a man to respect me. I had excellent examples in my father and brother, who of course learned from their fathers, and I’ve been thankful to have them around to teach my boys about manhood.

      Both of my children’s fathers for the most part were absent. They were around enough so that their children knew to call them daddy. They have different fathers, and both weren’t the best at being providers. My oldest would spend quality time with his father but those days didn’t last long and visits were far in between. As he got older his dad pulled away and left everything on me. I struggled a great deal, even as a wife. I struggled to raise them and take care of the household. Being diagnosed with chronic illnesses when my children were five and two put a huge burden on me because I needed tremendous help. My ex-husband was never around for assistance. Thankfully, I had an excellent support system in my family. Trying to get financial help for the most part was difficult, so I took both of them to court for child support, and back then the courts weren’t as helpful and strict as they are now. I didn’t start to get financial support for my children until they were in middle and high school. By then, their dads came back around to develop a relationship. I did appreciate what they could provide, a few dollars here and there, but it was never enough.

      Dorel Campbell-Adams

      I think when you first become parents, your parenting style comes from what your parents passed on to you. You become the parent that your parents were to you, and as your children grow and mature, you begin to develop your own parenting ideas and views, and they may not mimic or mirror the ideas and views that you grew up with. I had many discussions with my mom about this and her views about how we should treat certain situations, and we agree on some and disagree on others. So I think it all depends on the time that we are in and whatever is going on in the world and in our environment, because it’s ever evolving, and parenting is ever evolving. So it’s just what our kids are exposed to at that time and how we choose to tackle it. There are, of course, the base values that we carry on from generation to generation that this book addresses, such as, respect, reciprocity, and responsibility. These are the foundation, but of course, there are many different variations in how we pass along these values.

      So there is a difference between the way I was raised in the Caribbean by older parents compared to parents today and with these kids who are all high tech and the experiences that they have. I never had these experiences as a child, and my parents had different experiences as well. So the values they passed on to me were based on different scenarios, but hopefully it’s the same values that I’m passing on to my children. I’m talking about different variations of different scenarios that we have to tackle with these kids, but we are trying to pass on the same values.

      Desiree DeFlorimonte

      Parenting is an ongoing process in which a child is nurtured, protected, and guided in preparation to become a well-rounded adult. Although there are some instinctive responses to being a parent, I believe that I learned many of the necessary skills about parenting from my mother and through trial and error. I am grateful that she was there to guide and support me for my daughter’s birth and through the first nine months of her life. Through that experience, as well as recalling my upbringing as a child, I learned much about parenting.

      Just as many teachers teach the way they were taught, I believe many mothers parent the way they were parented. As a new and young mother, I learned the importance of taking care of and raising Angel through each developmental stage of her life. In college, I studied Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which included being responsible for my child’s basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter. In addition, I learned to provide her with a firm foundation, grounded in the Christian faith. The Good Book tells us to “train up a child in the way she should go and when she’s old, she won’t depart from it.” Throughout the years, this verse was central in my mind as I strived to raise my daughter to become a caring, capable, responsible, and independent young woman. Teaching Angel values, showing her affection, but not being afraid to discipline her when necessary were all part of the course. I instilled in her the importance of education and always supported her in school. I can recall the time I spent a morning observing in one of her middle school classrooms, at a boarding school she attended. At the end of the visit, she asked, “Mommy, when will I be old enough for you to stop sitting in my classrooms?” My response was, “When you are in college.” Of course, I did sit in one of her college classes since I was also teaching in the adjacent building.

      As a parent it was also important to protect my child and keep her safe from the myriad of obstacles, challenges, and dangers she would encounter. However, I had to find a happy balance and not be overly protective but encourage Angel to make good choices and learn from mistakes. There were times when nonnegotiable rules that were established were not adhered to and the resulting consequences had to be painfully accepted. I had lots of fun times, providing mommy time while reading to my child, traveling, visiting museums and family members, and giving unconditional love. All these matters are integral to the process of parenting.

      I believe I will always be a parent. Even now, my daughter is forty-three years old, and I’m still parenting her…giving advice, especially when asked. It’s truly an ongoing process as I’ll never stop parenting.

      Ryan Dickson

      For me, parenting is an amazing opportunity of discovering not only how I show up for my kids but what vision I have for their future as well. As a single parent, I call myself a decentralized parent, in that I have two girls with my ex-wife and a son from a previous situation. So with my daughters in the Virgin Islands, we are geographically separated, and I look at myself more as a facilitator between the relationships with my kids.

      In my life, my father had children outside of his relationship with my mom—and I’ve seen this in other situations as well—so that the nature of the relationship amongst the siblings is in direct correlation with whichever parent they live with that similarly facilitates that relationship. So obviously if you’re in a household with your mom and your siblings may have different fathers, your mom may facilitate the relationship among you and your siblings. If you happen to be somewhere else, there has to be an active effort from the parents to facilitate relationships with and among the children. So I look at my role as a facilitator, and I continue to reinforce the love and connectedness between my son and his sisters. As a single dad and also as an attorney, when I had my son out of wedlock, and was not in a serious committed relationship with his amazing, fantastic mom at the time she was pregnant, I instantaneously thought that warranted a fifty-fifty custody, and looking at how much value society placed on fathers at that time, it was impactful to me. I think it actually impacted my desire to want to be married and have more children and to not only have the full fatherhood experience, which to me meant waking up with your kids, and so forth, but also being a stand (support) for other fathers who may be frustrated with the system and how much time and connectedness they’re allowed to have with their children.

      All that being said, as a human being, I definitely identify right now as being a father who facilitates relationships with my children with multiple moms, and that pretty much runs a large part of my identity in terms of my commitment to expanding my business empire, so on and so forth, so I can fly back and forth between my kids with ease and show up one day and get on a plane and be here in the morning and just move in those types of ways and travel with them to where I want to go. Parenting requires teamwork. To fully integrate