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Anna Mallia | Wednesday, 18 November 2009

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The rights of children – but what about their duties?

We have just read that the Commissioner for Children is embarking on a campaign to raise awareness on the rights of the child but with no mention of their obligations.

As in everything in life there is a right and an obligation, and children are no exception. Children have their obligations too and for the campaign of the Commissioner for Children to be credible, the obligations of the children must be promoted on the same level as their rights.

That children have duties or obligations is something that we all take for granted, but little promotion, if any at all, is done about these duties. That the children have rights and that these rights are to be promoted and above all respected, is a priority especially in this day and age when we are depriving our children from their childhood.
I hear and read interventions by people who are involved with the rights of the children but who unfortunately only speak from what the books tell them and little do they know (and because they do not make any effort to do so) how the rights of the children are treated in homes, at school and in separation and child custody and access cases.

I say that we are depriving our children of their childhood because we are inundating them with adult problems and the parents are finding less and less time to be with the children.
Take the Family Court. There are two part time children’s advocates, with no training at all in children’s advocacy, and their reports are flimsy, wishy-washy and only relate what the children want and what is in the best interest of the children. They do not listen to the parents and conclude a situation only on what they hear from the children. So that if a child says that he does not want to see the father, access to the father is most of the time denied or prolonged until the buzzword ‘therapy’ starts.

But therapy means money and Appogg provides nothing for free meaning that the father will be deprived from seeing his son or daughter forever. Even supervised access at Appogg is not free so that that parent who has no money to pay for the session is again deprived from the gift of parenthood.

And what about the psychological reports that we are being embraced with at the family court? Fathers mostly ask for such reports to proof to the court that the children are treating him as their hostile enemy and the psychologists all they can do is to report that the children must start therapy with their father; neglecting altogether the fact that the source of this rift is the mother and his in laws and therefore excluding the mother from therapy sessions when the source of it all is the mother who does not stop demonizing the father with the children.

I am not a psychologist but if the cause is not treated, what is the point of treating the effect? Needless to say that most of these psychological reports are money down the drain because there is no system which ensures that the recommendations are adopted. Such measures involve more money and the parent who is drained of all the energy most of the times decides to give up hoping that when the children are of age they will realize that that father or mother is not the monster that he or she was pictured to be.

But in the meantime everybody keeps turning a blind eye to the situation and we are encouraging in a society where our children are not only being deprived of their childhood, but they are also being deprived of their two parents.

Needless to say that children in these situations tend to manipulate their parents, and they go with that parent who says the most yesses and of presents. This is most of the time overlooked in the reports on the children and no attempt is made to investigate how and why the children want to stay with one parent and not with the other. The children threaten to go with the other parent at the least resistance and also, that they will call 187 and report them for child abuse if they lift a finger on them.

Times have changed and if we have become responsible citizens, it is thanks to the discipline we received from our parents – even if such discipline involved spanking. I remember I wanted to leave school after Form 1, and were it not for scolding I got from my mother I would have left. Today I thank mum for that. But nowadays scolding means cruelty, and parents are most of the time in a trance not knowing how to discipline their children for fear of having the children taken away from them.

The EU funded a project together with the Council of Europe on the rights and duties of the children, and the project came with this list of duties that the children are bound to observe:

In conformity with the age to watch itself and to participate in house affairs
To concern with respect to the parents (adoptive fathers) both other members of family and to reception members of family
To study in conformity with physical and intellectual development. During study to observe regulations of an educational institution
To protect the health
To concern with respect to the state and to observe laws.
To observe the rules of behaviour accepted in a society
To concern carefully to environment

I know that the Commissioner for Children means well and that she is left with no resources to fulfill her role. But if she is going to embark on this campaign on the rights of the children, she has to make sure that the children do not get the message across that they only have rights and no duties or obligations.

The real problem when do we draw the line between a right and a duty of the children – and that is something that even our courts have so far failed to address.

 

 


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