Lynette’s father was a little Hitler, a tyrant, according
to her childhood friends. She was not allowed to eat with other
children in the dining room but was banished without reason to
the kitchen. She got the silent treatment often from her father.
He disliked her intensely. “Her father’s treatment scarred
her badly,” an old friend said. “Her mother was too
scared to open her mouth.”

When Lynette was 16 she was kicked out of the family
home. Charles Manson found her crying in the street and offered
to look after her.

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme later attempted
to assassinate President Ford.

Joe’s father was a drunken brute who beat his wife
and child savagely and often. The boy took refuge in fantasy and
in his teens discovered a fictional hero called Koba.

Koba was the main character in a popular Georgian
adventure story about a young peasant who fought alone and with
incredible success to free the oppressed.

Joe always wanted to be the best, the bravest, the
unbeatable comrade who was always right and never wrong … and
if anyone doubted this was so, he had better beware. Koba’s revenge
would be swift and terrible.

Who was Joe? You’ve guessed – Joseph Stalin, who
with Adolf Hitler shares that doubtful honour of killing more
people in the 20th Century than any other individual. . . . .
. .

Parenting is very important, and if we have children
a successful parent is something we ought desperately to want
to be.

But the stronger our desire, the greater may be our
confusion. Should we be strict or lenient, demanding or accepting?
Should we try harder or not so hard, punish or just talk, restrict
or liberate our children? Should we listen to the experts or do
what comes naturally?

So parents tend to quake and vacillate. As one mother
said recently, “I’m strict until I can’t stand myself. Then
lenient until I can’t stand my kids”.

In 1975 Dr. Spock blamed child psychiatrists, psychologists,
teachers, social workers and “paediatricians like myself”
for persuading parents that the experts know best – with the result
that many parents now regard themselves as ignorant and incompetent.
It makes you humble to have been a kid when everything was the
kid’s fault and a parent at a time when everything is the parent’s
fault!

Many parents have really tried hard, and still something
can go wrong. We all know the story of the black sheep in the
family, a boy or girl who “goes wrong” to the mortification
of their parents as well as the other children in the family.
We must not pass judgment on cases of that kind because each one
is different. It is too easy to blame parents for everything that
goes wrong in a family.

These days family life is changing. Families have
lost unifying economic functions and have often shrunk to two
adults with no aunts, uncles or grandparents to help guide the
children. All the heat is on parents, but fathers typically work
in distant offices, leaving mothers to raise sons with insufficient
fatherly support.

How can I be a good parent? All the experts advise
that the easiest way is to have good parents. But there are many
notable exceptions. With some help from God we can “rewrite
the script” of our lives. What we were in the past – even
in our childhood – need not determine how we will cope in the
future. We do not need to be the victims of our personal history!
Christianity is all about turning to God for help and strength
and victory, rather than blaming ourselves or our parents or the
world or the environment we live in. None of us needs to be imprisoned
within our past.

Here are eight sound pieces of advice which have
proved helpful to thousands of parents over the years:

1. “Spend time not money”

Did you ever
hear the story of the Prodigal Father? Some years ago Dr. Joplin
wrote it. It should be read by every dad today.

“A certain man had two sons, and the younger
of them said to the father, ‘Father, give me the portion of thy
time, and thy attention, and thy companionship, and thy counsel
and guidance which falleth to me.’
And he divided unto them his
living, in that he paid his boy’s bills, and sent him to a select
preparatory school, to dancing schools, and to college, and tried
to believe he was doing his full duty by his son.

“And not many days after, the father gathered
all his interests and aspirations and ambitions and took his journey
into a far country, into a land of stocks and bonds and securities
and other things which do not interest a boy, and there he wasted
his precious opportunity of being a chum to his son. And when
he had spent the very best of his life, and had gained money,
but had failed to find any satisfaction, there arose a mighty
famine in his heart and he began to be in want of sympathy and
real companionship.

“And he went and joined himself to one of the
clubs of that country and they elected him chairman of the house
committee, and president of the club and sent him to the legislature.
And he fain would have satisfied himself with the husks that other
men did eat, and no man gave him any real friendship.

“And when he came to himself, he said: “How
many men of my acquaintance have boys whom they understand and
who understand them, who talk about their boys and associate with
their boys and seem perfectly happy in the comradeship of their
sons, and I perish here with heart hunger? I will arise and go
to my son and will say unto him: ‘Son, I have sinned against heaven
and in thy sight, and I am no more worthy to be called thy father.
Make me as one of the thine acquaintances.’ And he arose and came
to his son.

“But while he was yet a great way off, his son
saw him and was moved with astonishment, he drew back and was
ill at ease. And the father said unto him, ‘Son, I have sinned
against heaven, and in thy sight. I have not been a father to
you, and I am no more worthy to be called thy father. Forgive
me now, and let me be your chum.

“But the son said, ‘Not so, for it is too late.
There was a time when I wanted your companionship and advice and
counsel, but you were too busy. I got the companionship, the wrong
kind – and now, I am wrecked in soul and body. It is too late
– too late – too late!'”

Studies show that father absence has baneful effects
(especially on boys), ranging from low self-esteem to hunger for
immediate gratification and susceptibility to group influence.

I wonder why Timothy was not as strong, either physically
or emotionally as he could have been? The Bible suggests that
his mother and grandmother were formative influences in his life
rather than his father. That’s a pity.

“All work and no play on the part of parents
often leads to all play and no work on the part of the children.”
This can include Christian work, too. Remember Eli’s two sons?
And Absalom?

Many parents have no idea what their children really
think because they never give them a chance to explain. “Can’t
you see I’m busy?” is a put-down that ought to be banned
from the parental lexicon.

One of the songs the Beatles sang says:

“She’s leaving home After living alone For so
many years …”

Woven into the poignant ballad of a runaway daughter
is her parents’ haunting lament: “We gave her everything
money could buy”. But they didn’t realise money can’t buy
love.

By the way, I heard that after buying a house for
the aunt who brought him up, Beatle John Lennon presented her
with a plaque which now hangs in her living-room. Engraved on
it is the phrase she directed his way almost every day of his
adolescent life: “The guitar’s all right, but you’ll never
earn your living with it.” (It may be a good idea for parents
not to be too judgmental about their kids’ hobbies!)

2. Do meaningful things together

It’s not enough
simply to spend time with your kids: make sure this time is spent
qualitatively. Play family games together, go for hikes, build
something. Turn off the TV and have every evening meal around
the table, and prepare topics for family conversation. Just because
evening meals get tense is no reason to quit them; there is no
better ritual for spotting and curing the tensions. One family
had no fear of the kids’ trying drugs; everyone does volunteer
work together at the narcotics-control centre.

If a family really battles for what one psychologist
has called “superordinate goals” – the kind of unifying
struggle for existence that once cemented families of pioneers
– these help parents and children to pull together. Have you ever
wondered why farmers’ kids are so loyal to their families’ goals?

3. Listen

The fifteen-year old anonymous author of
“Go Ask Alice”, who before she had lived her sixteenth
year became one of America’s 50,000 drug deaths, wrote that her
parents “talked and talked and talked, and never once did
they ever hear one thing I was trying to say to them … if only
they would let me talk instead of for ever and eternally and continuously
harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking,
yacking, yacking. But they won’t listen and we kids keep winding
back up in the same old, frustrating, lost lonely corner with
no one to relate to either verbally or physically.”

A few years ago Time Magazine had quite a brilliant
essay “On Being an American Parent”. In the following
issue a college student from Ohio wrote: “I’m 18 years old,
drink whenever I get the chance, have smoked pot, and as a result
of a very eventful Thanksgiving vacation, am no longer a virgin.
Why? Was it my parents or just me? I’m so confused – but who can
I talk to? Not my parents.

“My parents could read this and never dream
it was their daughter. My friends must have corrupted me (my mother
never liked my friends … I was always ‘better’ than they).

“I have only one important plea to parents …
Listen, listen and listen again. Please, I know the consequences
and I’m in hell.”

Relationships between parents and their children
are certainly fragile and require the most expert care. Parents
ought constantly to work to improve their understanding and skills
in human relations. They will remember that the opposite to love
is not hate but indifference. So they will try to give their children
individual, focused attention. They will learn the art of listening
– really hearing the feelings that are often hiding among the
words.

4. Be a good example

“There is no sure way to
guarantee that your child will grow up to be the kind of person
you would like him or her to be. The most likely way is for you
to be the kind of person you would like them to be.” The
parents’ own relationship is the most important gift they can
give their children. The child’s task is self-definition; unless
they can distinguish themseves from their culture, though on the
culture’s terms, a child never quite becomes an adult. Growing
up is a dialectical process that requires things that one can
push against in order to become stronger. A child matures by testing
the limits set by loving adults. Study after study shows that
two things are vital to a child’s later independence. First, warmly
firm parents who admire each other and on whom the child can model
himself or herself while breaking away. Second, opportunities
to prove their competence in work and love.

Discipline comes from being a disciple; both words
come from the Latin word for pupil. Children become disciples
of parents who enjoy and back up one another; whose mutual respect
and ungrudging praise for work well done makes children draw a
positive picture of themselves. But the approach must be genuine;
the young mind is quick to spot the phony. The T.A. people call
this “stroking”. Just as a cat or dog reacts positively
to affectionate stroking, so growing human beings learn to accept
themselves when they are affirmed. If children do not receive
enough positive strokes, they will look for negative strokes –
any kind of attention is better than none.

And, by the way, children aren’t fools: they’ll detect
what interests and hobbies have priority in their parents’ lives.
They’ll sense whether devotion to God is of greater or lesser
importance than devotion to golf!

Children learn more from their parents, than from
anybody else. If a child lives with criticism he learns to condemn…
If a child lives with hostility he learns to fight… If a child
lives with ridicule he learns to be shy… If a child lives with
shame he learns to feel guilty… If a child lives with tolerance
he learns to be patient… If a child lives with encouragement
he learns confidence… If a child lives with praise he learns
to appreciate… If a child lives with fairness he learns justice…
If a child lives with security he learns to have faith… If a
child lives with approval he learns to like himself… If a child
lives with acceptance and friendship he learns to find love in
the world.

Above all, children need to be taught that just as
God did not keep the joy of aliveness to himself but passed it
on to others, so must we if we are to fulfil his image. To receive
the gift of life and then do nothing with it beyond ourselves
denies its very genius.

In Albert Schweitzer’s autobiography he explains
his momentous decision to terminate his career as a scholar and
a musician in Germany and go to Lambarene as a physician to Africans.
He says quite simply that he had been given so much by so many
that he felt obligated to give something back to humanity. He
did not regard this as a sacrifice being painfully extracted from
him. He saw it rather as the natural reciprocity of life – to
whom much is given, much ought to be expected. This is how God
finds his joy – in giving himself beyond himself, and so must
we. Langdon Gilkey has gone so far as to define morality in quantitative
terms. He has developed this formula: the more people one takes
into account as one decides what to do, the more moral the act.
Thus the spectrum would start with the individual who thinks only
of their own welfare, which is down-right immoral, all the way
over to the other extreme to the God who so loved the world –
that is, who took everyone into account – that he have his only
Son.

And Jesus himself was known as “the Man for
others”. So parents ought, by their example, to give children
the impression that they are ready to make sacrifices to help
other people. And the more people considered, the more moral the
act, and the more likely that children will learn to be truly
unselfish.

5. Understanding your kids’ growing pains

A couple
of years ago Dr. Spock wrote an article about some of the problems
of adolescence. He said adolescent boys may express their anxious
competitiveness by steering very clear of their father’s occupation,
though some of them swing around to it later when they have matured
enough to overcome their irrational fears.

Psychoanalysis has also revealed that many boys who
feel overawed by their father suppress their resentment and antagonism
towards him and displace it on to their mother, flaring up at
her over quite reasonable requests or imagined slights.

A youth finds himself through finding something similar
in his friends and peer group. He mentions that he loves a certain
song or hates a certain teacher or craves to own a certain article
of apparel. His friend exclaims with amazement that he has always
had the very same attitude. Both are delighted and reassured.
Each has lost a degree of his feeling of aloneness, of peculiarity,
and gained a pleasurable sense of belonging.

Two girls talk fast all the way home from school,
talk for another half-hour in front of the house of one, and finally
separate. But as soon as the second reaches her home she telephones
and their resume the mutual confidences. A majority of adolescents
help to overcome their feelings of aloneness by a sometimes slavish
conformity to the styles of heir class-mates – in clothes, reading
matter, songs, entertainers. These styles have to be different
from those of their parents’ generation. And if their own styles
irritate or shock their parents, so much the better.

A majority of adolescents become ashamed of their
parents for a few years, particularly when their friends are present.
This is partly related to their own identity.

The sensitive parent will be aware of these “growing
pains” and will not be foolish enough to react too strongly
when their kids begin to untie their parents’ apron strings.

6. Don’t be over-protective

The best parents are
consciously and perhaps unconsciously training their children
to realise that some things in life are hard, unpleasant, and
even arbitrary.

Paul Tournier has pointed out that an overly protected
child goes into the world without defenses. Nature has a way of
building up immunities through interaction with that which threatens
life. This means that if a parent never allows a child to experience
the hardships of life, they prevent the natural protective mechanisms
from developing. A hot-house plant has little chance of surviving
in normal surroundings, and so does a child that has been overly
protected.

Kids can cope with frustrations, so long as there
is meaning in these frustrations. Don’t over-protect your children
against hurtful situations. In London, a doctor told a convention
of British psychiatrists that too much mother love could make
children hate their parents. Of thirteen men who had killed their
mothers, eleven had said that they had been dominated and over-
protected.

7. Discipline


Discipline your children lovingly. Parents’ discipline
should be based on four F’s: firmness, fondness, frankness and
fairness.

The Bible says, “Train up a child in the way
they should go: and when they are old, they will not depart from
it” (Proverbs 22:6). Now some parents carry discipline too
far, continually harassing their children. The Bible also says,
“Do not provoke your children to anger, lest they be discouraged”
(Colossians 3:21). In fact in both the Ephesians (6:1-4) and the
Colossians (3:20-21) commands about “Children obey your parents”
are followed by “Fathers, do not provoke your children to
anger”. So commandment no. 5-1/2 is: “Parents love your
children”. “No” should be said as lovingly as “yes”.
Deal with the situation, not the person. Don’t attack a child
for being clumsy, rather gently reprimand the clumsiness.

Further, most discipline problems consist of two
parts: angry feelings and angry acts. Each part has to be handled
differently. Feelings have to be identified and expressed; acts
may have to be limited and redirected. How and when to set limits
depends partly on the child’s age. Nothing makes small children
more anxious than being asked if they “want” to do this
or that and then being given reasons as to why they should. Dr.
Spock, sometimes accused of permissiveness, firmly advises, “Just
do what’s necessary”. In short: time for bed, lights out,
no chatter.

Limits certainly require reasons, but once clearly
stated, they should be enforced without exception. Letting a child
get away with something that they know is wrong or dangerous makes
them feel that their parents don’t love them – and rightly so.
Old- fashioned as it may seem, children still need discipline,
guidelines and certainly the supra-self imperatives of religion.

Basic to parent-child communication is the art of
helping children (or even adults) to express and thus handle their
deep feelings. It seldom pays to condemn or reason with an angry
child; strong feelings vanish not by fiat but rather by the clarification
that occurs in a child’s mind when a parent “mirrors”
or states them problem. To spank a tot who says, “I hate
you”, is to store up anger and augment future misbehaviour.
A skilful mother listens, says, “I know just how you feel”,
and the child’s feeling that someone understands shrinks the anger
to a size that can be subdued. Reassurance rather than reprimand
is often the best medicine for defeat or failure.

The Police Department of Houston, Texas, has issued
these ten easy rules for raising a delinquent:

‘1. Begin at infancy to give the child everything
he wants. In this way he will grow up to believe the world owes
him a living.

2. When he picks up bad words, laugh at him. This
will make him think he’s cute.

3. Never give him any spiritual
training. Wait until he is 21 and then let him “decided for
himself”.

4. Pick up everything he leaves lying round -books,
shoes, clothes. Do everything for him so that he will be experienced
in throwing all responsibility on others.

5. Quarrel frequently
in his presence. In this way he will not be too shocked when the
home is broken later.

6. Give a child all the spending money he
wants. Never let him earn his own. Why should he have things as
tough as you had them?

7. Satisfy his every craving for food,
drink and comfort. Denial may lead to harmful frustrations.

8. Take his part against neighabours, teachers, policemen. They are
all prejudiced against your child.

9. When he gets into real trouble,
apologise for yourself by saying, “I never could do anything
with him”.

10. Prepare for alife of grief. You are bound
to have it.’

8. Read the Bible and pray with your children

Teach
your children to know God and bring them up in the Church. Parents
will build a secure foundation for their children if the Bible
is read regularly in the home, grace is said at the table and
family prayers take place regularly.

When do you start doing this? Before your baby is
born!

Billy Sunday the famous evangelist used to say “If
you want to lick the devil, hit him over the head with a cradle!”

Conclusion

Everytime I encounter a strong, vibrant human being,
I always remind myself that that individual did not come to such
strength all by himself or herself. At the back of every healthy
personality lies one of the oldest and most significant of all
human arts, namely, the art of parenting. Here is human creativity
at its highest.

But these days the task of parenting ought to include
far more people than just two biological mates. It is becoming
painfully obvious in our day that the isolated nuclear family
cannot bear the full load of parenting. In fact one of the finest
missions a church like ours could assume would be that of “compensatory
parenting” where the natural family structure has broken
down for one reason or another. Back in the days when people lived
in clan-like groupings, if a child’s parents became incapacitated
in some way, other family members stepped in to fill the vacuum.
The same needs exist today, only we no longer live in clans, so
some other mechanism needs to function here. The Church could
be an expanding family which monitors what is happening to whom
and then steps in to help a child grow into those two most important
realities – who they are and why they are.

Finally, to really succeed as a parent one needs
above all a happy heart -free of worry and care. This allows one
to carry the heavy responsibilities of raising children with joy
and confidence. That’s why parents need above all a good trusting
relationship with their Heavenly Father.