Sable Monroe

By the time I was around nine or ten years old, school had stopped feeling like just a place to learn.

It became another place where I carried the consequences of adult problems I had no control over.

I was late to school constantly.

Not because I overslept.
Not because I was irresponsible.
Not because I didn’t care.

I was a child.

I wasn’t driving myself to school.

My father would usually do the morning drop-offs. He would take me to school first, then take my mother to work, and then go to work himself. But for whatever reason, we were often late.

And in Jamaica, being late to school was treated very seriously.

Teachers would punish me for it.

I still remember the feeling of walking into the classroom after everyone else was already seated. The teacher’s irritated expression. The feeling that I had already done something wrong before I even sat down.

Nobody asked whether the lateness was something I could control.

Nobody asked how a child was supposed to solve an adult transportation problem.

I was simply the visible person standing there to receive the punishment.

The same thing happened with school fees.

There were times tuition payments were late or checks bounced, and I would get called into the principal’s office because of it.

As a child, that felt humiliating.

I remember sitting there feeling small and embarrassed, as if I personally had failed to pay the bill.

But I didn’t have a job.

I couldn’t fix any of it.

I was a little girl sitting in an office being made to feel responsible for adult financial instability.

Looking back now, I realize how unfair that was.

Children absorb shame very easily, especially when authority figures repeatedly treat them like they are attached to the problem itself.

And in those moments, I started feeling attached to the instability around me.

I started feeling like I was the problem.

School became another place where adult stress followed me through the door.

At the same time, there was enormous pressure surrounding the Common Entrance Examination in Jamaica. Passing that exam could shape your educational future, and children were made aware of that very early.

So while I was carrying anxiety at home, embarrassment at school, and fear of disappointing adults, I was also expected to perform academically at a high level.

There wasn’t much room left to simply be a child.

Looking back now, what strikes me most is how often children are punished for circumstances completely outside their control.

Adults fail.
Adults struggle.
Adults create instability.

But somehow, the shame gets handed to the child.