Why a doctor vowed to end 'mongrel of violence'

Dr Paratene Ngata

The turning point in Dr Paratene Ngata's life came when his 10-year-old son refused to do the dishes.

The same thing probably happens in almost every family most nights. It was no crisis. But Dr Ngata found himself getting angrier and angrier.

"I asked him three times," he says. "On the third time, I choked him. I put him up against the pantry wall - you know how men grab each other around the scruff of the neck in a pub or somewhere and push them up against something.

"Bloody stupid, eh! My wife said, 'You are just like your father'."

It was that last jab that got him. Since his youth, he had been determined that he would not treat his own children as he had been treated by his father, Paraone, who died three weeks ago, aged 84.

"He went away to the war when he was 19 and saw lots of brutality," Dr Ngata says.

At his father's tangi, the Tolaga Bay doctor declared that his family was burying the violent behaviour it had inherited with his father.

"Dad, take the mongrel with you. Take the mongrel behaviour of violence," he said.

Since that incident with his son more than 20 years ago, Dr Ngata, 58, has committed himself to overcoming violence in his family and community.

His heart goes out to the Kahui family whose twin baby sons were killed in Mangere this week.

"I get families that are not going to get it right, that are very afraid, like I presume this family is. This is an area that Maori men in particular find very difficult to engage in."

The first step to dealing with it, he says, is to talk about it.

"We stuffed up. I'm the first one to say I stuffed up, and I'll pay the consequences. We have to make sure we don't stuff up again."

It's not easy, he says. Human history is a saga of "conflict, war and killing". More recently, institutions that once gave people a sense of order, such as the marae, have been lost as families scattered around the world.

His own two brothers and six sisters and his four grown sons are "a global family like everyone else". The extended family has weakened.

"Everyone is in such a rush. Those primary things that connect families and strengthen relationships, such as the family dinner, are no longer happening. Mum and dad watch TV, the kids have dinner, people come and go."

Families on the East Coast have been under stress as jobs in forestry and food processing disappeared over the past 20 years.

"Misery, poverty and violence all go together. When you are in a rut, something can be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

For Paraone Ngata, a great-nephew of the Ngati Porou leader Apirana Ngata, what made the difference was education.

"My dad and mum were advocates of education for their kids and went all out for that," Dr Ngata says. "That has been a major contributor to the change we have made."

As the family's eldest, Dr Ngata took it as his responsibility "to support and to empower and to say things to them like they are neat - to praise them and encourage them to continue with their gentleness and their generosity and their caring for each other.

"The solutions sound simple and I believe they are. It's about allowing people to engage in conversation and to listen.

"It's based around the values of the family - other people are important, relationships are important. So we put a lot of effort into making sure they have those good engagement and conversation skills.

"A lot of what we do is around communication - using words like please and thanks - and praise. It's more enabling language as opposed to directive language. Using those extra two or three words makes a difference."

When his son didn't want to do the dishes, he now thinks, he should not have simply told him to do them.

"On reflection, you say, 'Here, mate, can you give us a hand?"' he says. "Dumb stuff. Simple."

It's also showing physical affection. Dr Ngata has always refused to shake his sons' hands and insists on hugging and kissing them.

"Shaking hands is a custom: 'Pleased to meet you'. We extend one hand instead of two. I say, what are you doing with the other hand?

"We go with two hands - open hands - and cuddle and kiss and embrace. That is signalling that it's okay for men to show emotion."

It's 15 years since Dr Ngata helped to start the Tairawhiti Abuse Intervention Network, which works with people one-to-one and in groups to reduce violence. He believes society is "heading in the right direction", and strongly supports Green MP Sue Bradford's bill to stop parents using undue force to discipline children.

"It takes a generation to get this stuff into practice," he says. "We will never quite get there. There are lots of good things going on but not quite enough. It's always not enough."

In his own family, he believes that he and his wife of 34 years have already made a difference.

"Our goal as parents was to have gentle children," he says. "All our kids and nieces and nephews are loving, gentle, kind and generous, because if they threaten to be abusive or disrespectful, that is a no-no in our family."