"Stop crying before I give you something to cry for!", "Stop crying before I whoop your a$$! ", "...Because I said so!", "Don't question me! I am the father of this house, not you!". How familiar are these phrases? Many of us heard them growing up. They were spoken by parents who loved us but were themselves raised in environments where emotions were seen as inconvenient, disrespectful, or weak.
While these messages were intended to maintain order and teach resilience, they actually taught us something else entirely: disconnect from your feelings. Your emotions are not valid. What you feel doesn't matter. Get over it.
Children who grow up learning to suppress their emotions don't suddenly become emotionally healthy adults. They become adults who hide what they feel and struggle to name what they feel. Adults who explode in anger and cause grief in relationships because they never learned to process frustration. Adults who battle anxiety and depression because they were taught that feelings are the enemy.
You can validate your child's emotion without losing your authority; that is one of forty-six exercises you will find inside 'Rooted in Culture & Raising Emotionally Healthy Children - separating tradition from trauma-'.
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My name is Tempu Nefertari and this is my life work. For over 30 years I've been helping parents nurture positive relationships with their children and supporting them in living their best lives. A great part of my self-esteem work was done with children in schools and communities through Omololu -The Children's Foundation which I founded in Barbados in 2002. I worked with children & families affected & infected with HIV/AIDS, gifted children inclusive of those on the autism spectrum and with the range of attention deficit challenges in Barbados, Trinidad and the United States. No work with children is complete without working with teachers and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to train teachers in the Nefertari Re-Ma'at Approach for Building Self-Esteem in Children of Afrikan Descent. I've had the privilege of training and conducting workshops with teachers from across the Caribbean, the US, the UK and Afrika.
I am aware that I showed care and concern for children from the early age of 9, but it was confirmed as my life purpose in a life-changing vision I had at 19 where children called out to me from abandoned houses, caves and abusive homes to save them. This vision led me to work with the Save the Children Foundation founded in the UK by Kes Liqua Mimiran Zacharias and to start work on my self-esteem approach which had its early beginnings at a community-based school - the All in One Center- in Beetham Trinidad & Tobago. My work with families and children has benefitted from my qualifications and work in Agriculture, Law, Education, Pan-Afrikanism and as a Human Rights Activist. I am the mother of two, one of whom keeps watch over us from the heavenly realm.
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