I came upon a certain truth early this morning as I did my reading.
“Train a child in the way he should go, and (even) when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Training children is the epitome of parenting, and parenting gets to the heart of the truth.
We form loving family relationships in order to procreate. In the heart of the family, with parents present for “training the child,” we find children resistant to the stresses and temptations of modern society. This is my theory.
The stresses of society include peer pressure to experiment with drugs. As I read the article which describes the latest outrageous ways of importing drugs to the US, I read the comments. Everyone shouted: LEGALIZE DRUGS!
They, like our modern medicine (at least at times), seek to treat the symptoms, rather than the problem.
The symptoms include people tempted to try stupid things, like addictive controlled substances. I have personally witnessed the demise of many who went down this road. The results are rotted teeth, loss-of-love, rejection, homelessness, desperateness, wanton behavior, theft, robbery, murder, premature aging, misery, pain, illness, isolation, anger, hatred, and sudden, violent death.
I have never, nor do I now, nor shall I ever experiment with controlled substances. My comment to the news article I read, about proper parenting, was attacked in odd ways, missing the whole point. The attacks came-from those who missed the boat on decent parenting, I suspect, and who missed the whole point, in its entirety. I will quote my comment here, which received no truly sentient replies, but rather, fell upon deaf ears. I expected a joust. I received nothing but a rider-less horse, running away into the shadows from whence he came:
“I do not, shall not, and have never considered use of such substances. “Train-up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he shall not depart from it.” This proverb suggests that parents have a profound role, one for which they had best be prepared. I may have not had the best parents, but I did learn some good things. Parents: don’t be parents if you cannot raise your children the right way!”
The problem is the deterioration of the family unit.
High divorce rates, custody battles which only injure children, and children wandering the streets in a culture of darkness and indulgence are the symptoms.
The problem is parenting.
It does not exist, in my opinion, for two-wage-earners (at least, not as it should). Latchkey kids are left alone to the wiles of the Internet, which lead them in their boredom to deviant websites. We allow them to watch mainstream TV sitcom shows which allow and condone promiscuity (I recently viewed an episode of “Two and a Half Men.” I will never watch that TV show again, and it reinforces the correctness of my decision to eliminate TV from my lifestyle).
Where does poor parenting lead? It leads to the kids. They deserve better, but they fare far worse.
They deserve family.
My parents weren’t stellar, and were, in-fact, lousy, but they did at least condone the better things in life: challenge, education, physical activity, and making the best of tough situations (Here’s a famous IBM slogan: “THINK!”). I was taught patience, perseverance, creative thought, and thus, was taught to avoid the worst things in life.
The thing I struggle against is the world. The world says a two-year-marriage is just fine, that commitment is unimportant, that kids are secondary to income, that it’s OKAY to cheat, that it’s OKAY to just bed-down and have a night of romance regardless of the outcome. It says divorce is an option that is just fine. It says a fetus can be killed if it’s inconvenient. It says kids can be ignored and left to public education to learn all they must know. It says much. It offers nothing but disappointment and lost (or worst of all, dead) kids.
My prayer for all my readers is this: that the family unit grow, that we teach our children well, so that they do not fall prey to the wiles of the world, which seem great, but which lead to abandonment and shame. My prayer, beyond all, is that this reaches the ears of the would-be family formers, so that they might think carefully as they plan their family, their futures, and ultimately our futures.
Am I a dreamer? To quote the line of a John Lennon song, [“…I hope I’m not the only one…”]