
I wrote the book, Professional Parenting – Raising the Hope For America’s Future, Publish America, LLP, 2007, for the
purpose of disseminating important information – not just to parents, but also
to anyone with the propensity to have an influence on children. That just about covers everybody.
Why do I consider myself an authority on the
subject of child rearing? Simply
because I have successfully done it and I have carefully researched and
analyzed the methods and their results, I believe the term “expert” is applicable
from a technical point of view.
The volume of articles I will write to further
explore the important subject of child rearing will not be a regurgitation of
the book, so I would advise anyone who wishes to continue the exploration of
professional parenting with me to acquire and read the book. It will not be time wasted.

America’s
Future? You’re Looking At It!
Deborah
Venable
01/20/10
This is the “raw” picture I submitted to the
publisher to be placed on the book cover of, “Professional Parenting, Raising
the Hope for America’s Future.” My
husband took the picture back in 1976 soon after the birth of our second
daughter, Heather. He was an excellent
amateur photographer among his many other talents.
He was also an educator, and as the title of this
site implies, education is an absolute imperative to the future of
America. Everything we do here is an
attempt to encourage individual education.
The above picture, I believe, conveys a message of the very beginning of
human education.
Notice how my daughter is using every one of her
senses to explore her new world. She is
reaching out and communicating as she focuses in on her first contact with
human life. It is said that babies can
sense their mother’s identity through smell long before their eyes and ears can
focus as accurately. Having been a
mother five times over, I believe this is true.
The human connection that means more than anything
else in the world is rightfully between parent and child. To deny that is to deny that the earth is
round.
Why then does any government think it is right to
supplant parental rights to this connection with government mandated formal
education? That is what we have seen
happen, and that IS the one true stumbling block to America’s bright future.
We might say that it has happened because most
parents have no idea how to educate their children, therefore, the government
is the logical substitute. We might
also say that education is a “right” and therefore it follows that government
should guarantee this right. Then there
are those who say that parents don’t want the job anyway and somebody has to do
it. None of these things ring true in a
spiritual sense, so I must conclude that they are all copouts to explain a much
more sinister reason.
Let’s compare the issue of mandated public
education with the latest affront to our American individualist sensibilities,
shall we? That of mandated healthcare
coverage – does that one ring a bell?
Proponents of this attempt at government takeover of this very personal
issue have said that most people have no interest in providing for themselves,
nor could they because of expense, the personal commodity of healthcare. They also say that healthcare is a “right,”
don’t they? While this seems to be
touching a nerve in the fraying fabric of individualism in America at present,
some folks are saying that eventually we will all lie down and let the bus roll
over us – just like what happened with mandated public education.
I implore you to read The
Yellow Prison Bus and the Future Of American Healthcare – by Voddie Baucham. If
you are an individualist instead of a collectivist and this well-reasoned
article doesn’t scare you to death, then I guess you think the world is flat.
Education is so
important that it cannot and should not continue to be mandated. That which is mandated does not hold nearly
as much importance as that which is acquired through choice. I see very little educating toward choice
these days. What I do see is an
overabundance of educating toward acceptance of collective value. There is no collective value in a system
that wipes out individual worth.
Individual human worth is something that must be claimed and then
defended with every fiber of one’s being.
It is the secret to raising good children to teach them that they are
important as unique individuals, and that every individual is important in the
whole scheme of life. Responsibility
for themselves and their individual attention to those around them naturally
follows these lessons when they are well learned. This education cannot be mandated in a group classroom of
collectivism.
The learning that goes on in such classrooms is
directed by a consensus of whatever the group needs to think at the time
according to those in charge. That
could be anything but individual responsibility or for consideration of the
worth of any individual.
Let’s take a look at Geoffrey Botkin’s overview,
which succinctly answers the question, why
revisionist history is being taught in public schools. This important article
gets to the meat of what I am saying here with this quote by Sam Blumenfeld:
“The plain truth is that there has been in this country a
deliberate plan to change the nature of American education so that the American
people could be easily led into socialism.”
Sam Blumenfeld is
a contemporary, an accredited and very credible educator and he has even
likened the public school system to a criminal
enterprise.
I hope you will
read these linked articles and think long and hard about the implications they contain. I have been trying to draw attention and
educate parents about these things for a long time now. Until more people take these evident truths
seriously and decide once and for all that parenting children, and thus
educating them, is the most important thing they will ever do, America’s hope
for the future will continue to be in deadly peril.
My husband dedicated his professional life to making a
difference in individual lives. Our
children are a testiment and a reflection of his success in our personal
lives. We still ache from the hole his
passing left, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel a spiritual
direction to continue educating and trying make a difference in the lives of
individuals.
I could be doing
other things at this point in my life.
I have many interests, and boredom has never been a word in my
vocabulary. I choose to use my twilight
years to continue learning and imparting what I learn through researching and
writing these little articles. There
are many others who are better at it than I am, but mine is a unique
perspective, and with the propensity to connect with an unknown number of
individuals, I am glad to have the choice to try to do so.
“Teach your
children well” is a recurring theme in the Christian Bible. I think it has been lost on much of modern
society. In the secular and progressive
attempt to segregate any Christian belief or teaching from the social
mainstream, parents have been coerced into believing that they have no rights
to discipline or direct their children’s education. The inescapable truth, however, is that they have every right and
more importantly the sole responsibility for their children’s education. That they must now wrest it from the
contemptuous shackles of government in our beautiful America is a shameful sin
of the society that allowed it to happen.

Brett Heather Lacey Shannon
Lori
Family Planning
Deborah Venable
12/05/09
These are my children. They are why I decided to pay more attention to just what’s going
on, what’s being taught, what’s not being learned, and what they are inheriting
from the world I grew up in.
The age difference between the oldest, Shannon,
and the youngest, Brett, is 20 years.
Their father and I were excellent family
planners. We believed in having
children when we wanted them – and we wanted each and every one of them. They are all blessings from God.
We were young when we married, but we knew each
other for 2 years before we married, and then waited 2 more years before having
the first child. Then we spaced the
children in such a way that we did not add a child before our “baby” was
walking and talking, and ready for the “formal” learning process. Our babies had undivided attention during
those first, formative years. That’s
the way we did it, and it worked for us.
I would have to say it is the best way, though I know many would
disagree.
Career women, who listen to their “biological
clock” ticking away sometimes choose to delay starting a family until
circumstances are just right, and when they decide they want more than one or
two children, they must cram them into an ever diminishing window of time. Then there are the youngsters, who do not
necessarily “plan” the start of their families, nor the subsequent additions,
but they want childbearing all out of the way before they get “tool old” to
enjoy or keep up with their babies. I
believe something may get missed with either of these options. You may not notice it until the children are
all grown.
Camaraderie amongst siblings – that’s what may be
missed. Note I said, “may be
missed.” It doesn’t have to be.
My brother and I were very close, and seven years
separated our ages. As we grew older,
our camaraderie was steeped in the shared experience of our unique childhood. We appreciated many things about our parents
and our upbringing that other people our age didn’t even think about. We came to many of the same political
conclusions in our adulthood, far and away different from those shared by our
parents, simply because of the times we lived in and the changes we saw. We always had great respect for each other
in our adult years.
I see the same respect among my own children. They are all very different and unique
people, but they enjoy each other’s company, they take care of each other, and
they think of each other’s happiness.
They are a family molded with great love and devotion.
The optimism with which they approach their lives
and their futures, and the contentment they have with who they are – even their
dreams for future possibilities mark each and every one of them with
uniqueness. They’ve had hard times and
good times, victories and losses, and they’ve seen kindness and cruelty, but
they are good people and I am very proud of them.
One thing I would not abide in the raising of my
children was fighting among themselves.
I simply did not allow it. My
brother and I had only a few run-ins in our youth, mostly due to my own
immaturity and his wish to be shed of me for short periods of time. I see that now. One such incident involved my locking him is a wasp infested,
dark storage shed and ignoring his pleas for help. Our mother rightfully punished me, but my own psyche punished me
to a far greater degree. I came into
adulthood with an enduring claustrophobia, which remains with me to this
day. I empathized with his distress to
such a degree that I even wrote a college paper on the experience some years
later. The truth was, though, that I
adored him and wanted only his respect and companionship. We achieved that mutual camaraderie and
enjoyed it through our adult life.
I was the sickly one in childhood, and he was the
picture of health. He worried a lot
about that. I am enveloped in the irony
that I have survived him, as he succumbed to one of the worst kinds of multiple
cancers over four years ago.
His son now resides with my children – as one of
them, loved and respected by them, and every bit a man his father and mother
can be proud of. After a long stint in
the U.S. Navy he came home to us.

Chris Kay
Home and
family is something you have to build carefully, brick by brick, and you have
to maintain the foundation of mutual respect.
Siblings who are allowed to bicker with each other never know that
epitome of mutual respect. Oh, they may
love each other, even be willing to die for each other, but it will be out of
duty – not respect, that they remain an intact family. The glue of mutual respect is the strongest
bond in the world. I emphasize this
opinion throughout my book about parenting.
Mutual respect is as necessary between parent and child as it is between
siblings. Building it is the most
important component of family and family planning. That foundation will survive when nothing else can.
The social attitudes surrounding family in the
current state of moral crisis is causing more chaos than humanity was ever
meant to bear. Accepting and labeling
aberrant behavior as normal, defining family simply as a “consenting” group of
two or more temporarily cohabitating human beings instead of the rock solid
foundation for society that it really is, and placing less than animal
importance on the act of procreation has led us to this chaos. Respect for anything akin to family values
is virtually dead in such a society.
Progressives would have us believe that change in
attitudes toward family values is necessary in order for mankind to evolve in
the modern world. Elitist academics
have infested our halls of higher learning and the rest of the education system
in this country to expound on their ideals of peace and social justice through
acceptance of nonsensical theories of equality while they sweep away any
adherence to faith and values the country was built upon. Family planning is not in their curriculum,
except that which puts young people in touch with their sexuality and bids them
to “feel good” about themselves no matter how they act.
I’m shocked
and appalled at what passes for family values these days. But then I’m shocked and appalled at the
ever-growing government infringement on personal liberties and the worship of
man-made laws to fix moral decay.
Perhaps it is time to look to those building blocks, which are the
foundation of human society, for answers.
If mutual respect is the glue that holds families together, it certainly
couldn’t hurt to employ it in the rebuilding of our great country, could
it? Mutual respect works both ways in
government too. Instead of electing
people who do not respect individuals to think for themselves, do for
themselves, and govern their own lives, let’s look around for those who know
that government should always be smaller in power than the individuals it would
rule. Those are the kind I could
respect, how about you?
So, here’s to my family and the friends we have
chosen to enrich our lives. May God
continue to bless us all, and may that foundation remain intact forever.

Lori Virginia
Venable
The Real Danger Of Indoctrination
Deborah Venable
09/28/09
It is nothing
new. The public school system has been
using the tool for a very long time unfortunately. I fought against it for the almost thirty years that I had
children in the public school system. I
find it more than a little amusing that irate parents are coming out of the
woodwork now to either blast or defend the video tapes that surfaced recently
showing very young school children singing songs worshipping President
Obama. That’s right – I said
“worshipping” and I meant it.
The reason I find it
amusing is that many parents are claiming ignorance of the existence of such
blatant indoctrination. Hey, folks,
I’ve been there and done that for a very long time now – the whole parenting
thing, ya know.
The young lady
pictured above is my youngest daughter.
She will soon be twenty-four years old.
I vividly remember a run-in I had with one of her teachers over the
subject of multicultural education.
That particular teacher was very dismissive of my views when it came to
whose culture was being elevated. She
was shocked that I would have a problem with her encouraging her students to
“explore their roots” (specifically those roots that originated on foreign
shores) to the subjugation of America’s own very real cultural roots. Since my children are one-quarter Lebanese
because their grandmother’s family came over from Lebanon early in the last
century, this teacher was making a big deal out of students such as Lori with
easily linked “foreign” culture heritage.
I took exception with her attitude because her charges were elementary
school age and very easily influenced to see such heritage as superior to
purely American heritage.
Now, this all
happened pre-911. Since then, Lori has
noticed quite another attitude at times – specifically whenever she boards an
airplane. Since she inherited a lot of
the beautifully exotic Mid-Eastern looks from her father, she is usually
singled out for scrutiny, (believe it or not) at airport security. But that is neither here nor there at this
juncture.
Indoctrination can
take many forms. The current push seems
to be directed toward (here come those “talking point” buzz words) the culture
of personality. Hence, the Obama
worship. God help any conservative who
tries to point out the striking resemblance of those tapes to other well-known
examples of youth worship of historical tyrants. We are all seen as hysterical racists instead of historical
literates!
This is America,
folks. Need I constantly remind too
many parents of that fact? We do not
worship our political leaders in this country.
We do not lift them to regal status, because, if you’ll remember, George
Washington wisely declined the designation of king all those years ago,
settling instead on president. I’m sure
there have been several of his antecessors who would have preferred the royal
distinction, but perhaps none more than the current occupant of the
office. As a complete aside, if we
could “explore his roots” we might find a more recent occurrence of some sort
of royal blood, which may account for some of this attitude – who knows?
The indoctrination of
American school children has taken on various cloaks over the years, from
shedding any allegiance to God, to embracing unproven theories of such subjects
as radical environmentalism.
Politically correct compliance with social progressivism has marched boldly
into America’s classrooms and taken a stand at the podium of overwhelming
influence on young minds to such an extent that parents are literally left to
wonder if they have any hand in determining the direction their children’s
futures will take.
Not satisfied with
requiring mandated education begin at younger ages now, progressives have
decided that even more time in the classroom is necessary, with some pushing
the idea that children need not have a summer vacation from school any more. Indeed as much as a whole month has already
been shaved off that vacation over the past few decades, but now the proposal
is to keep kids in school year round.
It’s that pesky parental influence that public educators would really
wish to curtail, if the truth be known.
They will tell you it is because the whole summer vacation thing was
originally based on the agrarian calendar, and that modern times do not require
the help of children in the fields, etc.
Excuse me. Who buys that?
Of course too many
parents will sign on to it for purely selfish reasons and justify it by taking
that bait hook line and sinker. With
the continuing attack on the traditional family, more mothers in the workplace
and out of the home, summer will be simpler to handle if the kids just stay in
school year round. If I sound cynical,
prove me wrong! The one thing that
children do NOT need is more time under the influence of the mandated public
education system.
The real danger of
indoctrination in the education system is the sheer amount of power that is
relinquished to an inept system that proved a detriment to society a very long
time ago. The system is not getting
better, nor is it likely to. If you read
last month’s installment of these professional parenting articles, then you know that this is true, and
you know why.

Heather Lynn
Venable with P.J.
The Sleeping Giant
Deborah Venable
09/06/09
If the sleeping
giant is indeed awakening from its slumber due to the worsening of stench from
the rotting body politic, perhaps this is the time to gently remind everyone
how we got to this point. One needs
look no further than the education system in this country.
Seven years ago I
wrote an article titled, The Case Against Socialism and Public
Education. The article starts out thus:
The case against public
education was made almost 120 years ago with data over 200 years old at that
time. Painstaking research had been
compiled that supplied undeniable proof of the damage to our society being
caused by mandated public education.
Those who tried to bring this material to public attention were maligned
and discredited and even persecuted.
Think about this: the proof of the total ineffectiveness and even
detriment of spending more and more money on public education had been
collected, verified, brought to the attention of the government, and
subsequently tossed aside as even more public money was coerced from the
American people as control of their children was taken from them and placed in
the Godless, greedy hands of public educators – almost one hundred and twenty
years ago! Download this
book and read it.
I recently found
that the link to download the book I recommend was dead, so that has been
updated and the link is now active. I
would highly recommend every parent read the book titled, “Poison Drops In the
Federal Senate” by Zach Montgomery, (Third Edition) published in 1886. If possible, download the PDF version of the
book because relative tables and graphics are absent from the other
versions. You will be given a choice
from this source.
The book is written
in the tone of that day, which often times was tediously repetitive, but
equally meticulous in conveying a greater understanding of the author’s meaning
than much of what passes for ambiguous modern knowledge. Since I have always been a lover and
collector of old books, I find this delightful, but I must beg for tolerance of
less appreciative readers of this style to see this book through with patience
and open-mindedness. The rewards are
undeniable in greater understanding of the shameful predicament we find
ourselves in today.
In just the last
seven years, since my article was published, we have seen an ever greater
decline in morality, freedom, and parental rights, while staggering proof is
presented that mandated public education is doing nothing but promoting it
all! We are slip-sliding ever closer to
communist totalitarianism as we give up our American heritage of individualist
constitutionalism. A greater percentage
of Americans are ignorant and governmentally illiterate than ever before, yet
mandated public education is worshipped as the god of infinite wisdom and
success, while a greater portion of America’s hard-earned wealth is placed on
its altar.
I must impress on as
many people as possible, parents and non-parents alike, the importance of
reading this thoughtful book for an eye-opening understanding of what went
wrong in America. If you’d like to know
just who this Zachariah Montgomery was, click
here
for a concise biography of this man, who also was Assistant Attorney General of
the United States under President Grover Cleveland. Not only was he a life-long Democrat, but also a transplanted San
Francisco Bay Area California statesman.
Excerpt from Poison
Drops:
"Communism,"
as defined by Webster, means "the doctrine of a community of property, or
the negation of individual rights in property." Now, if the man who has
earned, or otherwise lawfully acquired, property has no individual right
thereto as against his neighbors who desire to use it for the education of
their children, why may not these same neighbors with equal justice declare
that he has no individual right to the same property against those who choose
to take it for the feeding and clothing of their children?
Another excerpt:
Indeed,
according to our humble way of thinking, there is no kind or degree of
communism so utterly revolting as that which, for educational purposes,
virtually asserts a community of title, not only to the property, but also to
the children of the private citizen. Yet, this, unfortunately, is the communism
of America; a communism having for its main trunk an educational system the
most ruinously expensive and the most demoralizing that the world ever saw. A
communism whose poisonous roots have spread far and wide, and struck deep down
into the soil of American literature, American politics, and, we may say,
American religion.
Remember, these
words were written in the 1880s. Mr.
Montgomery died in 1900, so I can only imagine how he would view today’s
American communism. If we continue to
deny such truths as this man brought forth so long ago, how can we make claim
to such a lofty idea as the awakening of a moral, sleeping giant? If we are the “giant” we claim to be, we
must know that the heart of the evil monster we must slay beats in America’s
education system. This is the monster
that will devour us all if we continue to let it!
As I look around at
the present day state of the educational system, the continuing clamor of
parents demanding that something be done, the choke hold that government has on
parental rights, the damnation of our religious roots, and the only proposed
solutions to “fix” the system being that of continuing to throw good public
money after bad, I have to shake my head in amazement! Much like health care, education is not a
right to be demanded of government via public coffers! For those who cannot afford either, these
things would be available from charitable sources if government would just step
away from the free enterprise production and regulation of both.
Nationalized
education has failed, just as surely as nationalized health care would. Until the “giant” fully wakes up to that
fact, America’s problems will continue to compound, thus getting much worse at
a faster rate than ever before. This is
simple logic backed up by self-evident facts, reason, and indisputable data.

Fighting For A Child
Deborah Venable
07/23/09
When you have to go to bat for your child, you
are on your own, regardless of policy, government or otherwise, and you
certainly do not need chains restricting your every move as you go into battle.
The subject is health care. The slope is slippery. The stakes are high. All the regulations on health care in the
world will not insure success in the personal struggle to secure quality
medical care when it is needed. Anyone
who believes that government or anyone else can fight your personal battles for
you better than you can is a total idiot at best and a pitiful shell of a human
being at worst.
Restrictions and regulations on health care in
this country – the whole industry of health care, which includes insurance
companies, have, in my opinion, done a lot more harm than good to the overall
quality of health care. The only way
one can argue against that statement is to believe that individuals owe more to
a collective than they do to their individual needs or wishes. They also must believe that government
should “take care” of them. This is an
unrealistic and impossible desire, and it shatters the whole concept of
individual rights.
Instead of demanding more regulations and
restrictions on health care in this country, we should be demanding fewer. No one seems to be saying this as the
president and congress seeks to implement a monstrous piece of nationalized
health care legislation.
Now for the personal experience – the anecdotal
testimony – to support my views stated in these first paragraphs:
When my middle child was fifteen-years-old, she
awoke early one morning crying in pain.
She was also paralyzed from her waist down. She was fine when she went to bed the night before and had
sustained absolutely no injury to cause this.
We lived in Livermore, California, an East Bay community of the San
Francisco Bay Area.
We reacted by picking her up and carrying her
to the car and driving her to the nearest medical facility, an urgent care unit
in Livermore. The closest hospital was
in Pleasanton, some fifteen miles away, and we were directed by the staff at
the urgent care facility to take her to Pleasanton immediately before we even
took her out of the car. They knew they
could not help her and that time was of the utmost importance.
I have nothing but the greatest admiration for
the way these people and the staff at the hospital in Pleasanton handled my
daughter’s case. The emergency room at
the hospital wasted no time evaluating my daughter and making her as
comfortable as possible. The doctor
there issued an extremely rare and difficult initial diagnosis and ordered the
proper tests to confirm it – all within the space of a couple of hours. He put out an immediate call for a surgeon,
one of only a very few who has ever treated the condition and who practiced and
resided in the city of Fremont, located about thirty miles away.
I thank God to this day that we happened to
live there at that time, and that the medical facility and those doctors were
the ones that took care of my daughter.
I do not think she would have survived otherwise. She had a condition previously unknown to us
called, AVM, (arteriovenus malformation), and suffered a sudden rupture or
bleed out from the blood vessels surrounding her spinal chord. A blood clot formed in the spinal column and
put pressure on her spinal chord – literally choking it to near death.
Within a few hours, the surgeon had rushed to
the hospital, consulted with the emergency room staff, patiently explained her
situation to us, and scheduled her for immediate surgery. We were told that without surgery, she would
die, with it she still had a fifty-fifty chance of dying, and a very real chance
that if she lived, she would be permanently paralyzed. Within six hours of arriving at the
hospital, our daughter was on the operating table. The surgery required that her back be opened up into her spinal
column where the clot could be removed and the mass of malformed blood vessels
be removed while the blood supply to her spinal chord was rerouted. She was in surgery for over five hours.
During this entire time, neither the doctors
nor hospital staff was concerned in the least about how her treatment would be
paid for. I was not forced to fill out
mountains of paperwork or answer any questions about our ability to pay for her
care. Only when our daughter’s life had
been saved, after the surgery, did we get to the bottom line talks. I’m not sure that would be the case today,
but it was then and there.
We had what would be considered very good
medical insurance provided by the group plan of my husband’s employer. Our daughter remained at the Pleasanton
hospital for a week after her surgery.
Her doctor ordered that she be moved to the best rehabilitation hospital
in the area, Golden State, in San Ramon.
He had said that she would have a long way back to “normal” but gave her
a very good prognosis if she received the proper care.
With the insurance in full swing now, the
problems began.
I guess the company was already a little miffed
because the “visiting” surgeon from Fremont had been called to perform the
surgery at Pleasanton. Our daughter
could not have been safely moved and there was no surgeon on staff at that
hospital qualified to perform that surgery.
The surgeon and the rehabilitation hospital he recommended, Golden
State, were not on our insurance “list” of choices to choose from for medical
care. They did not balk so much at
paying the surgeon, but refused to send our daughter to Golden State.
She was moved, instead to UCSJ Medical Center
in San Jose. This happened on Friday
before the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
She was placed in a multi-bed room that had been used for storage of
medical equipment and looked more like a storage room than a hospital
room. The staff we encountered there
were less than sympathetic or caring about our daughter, what she had been
through, or what she would still have to endure. It was a “teaching hospital” and her privacy was not valued or
even considered. Her recovery was
immediately set back for weeks at least, due to her levels of stress and
unhappiness at her situation. She was
in constant pain and for the most part still a paraplegic.
If the term, “mama bear” means anything at all
to you, it will describe my feelings at the time. Time to “go to bat” for our child. My husband was every bit as livid as was I, and was in constant
contact with his employer’s insurance representatives and top management of
both employer and insurance company. We
brought pressure to bear on the hospital staff to leave our daughter in peace
until we could get her removed from that facility, but it fell on deaf
ears. The move could not happen until
after the weekend, because the insurance offices were offline, so to
speak. So we spent every available
moment there with her. This meant a
difficult commute from our home about fifty miles away, and it meant putting everything
else on hold.
Her “care” in that facility was almost
non-existent. They did nothing for her
except force her to endure repeated examinations by student staff – both
physical AND psychological! They said
she would need extensive psychological therapy because she was “pulling away”
from the reality of her condition. Meanwhile,
the daily physical therapy begun at Pleasanton was brought to a screeching halt
at UCSJ. They would not even get her
out of bed. We did that for her
ourselves so that she could escape the gloom of her surroundings in the
“storage room” and get outside in the sunshine. When we were not there, she did not even get the mildest of pain
medication or any caring word or smile.
Before that awful weekend was over, she had a roommate – an elderly
woman with a large family that crowded the room and blared the television. To say that she was miserable and getting
worse is a gross understatement.
I know that if you have never had to face a
problem like this, it would be easier to dismiss the excruciating agony we went
through, first by nearly losing our daughter, and then having to watch while
her recovery was arrested and her health put in grave jeopardy because we were
trying to work within the health care and insurance system. If we had continued to be hamstrung by the
system, our daughter may never have recovered.
We promised our daughter that she would be out
of that place the day after the holiday – as soon as we were no longer dealing
with the skeleton crews at the hospitals and the empty offices of
administration everywhere. We would
have taken her home immediately if it would not have jeopardized her life that
soon after such a major surgery. After
a full agonizing day, and a demand that our directions and those of her doctor
be followed to the letter, an ambulance was dispatched to take her to Golden
State Rehabilitation Hospital. We
checked her in about 10:30 that night.
The difference was immediate. Our psychologically “bruised” child
responded instantly to the warm, caring staff and the beautiful
surroundings. Her private room was
spacious and fully wheelchair accessible.
Her physical therapy began at once, and psychological therapy was deemed
unnecessary.
Our insurance company fought us tooth and nail
about paying for some of her care, but ended up paying for the greatest bulk of
it anyway – about a half million dollars before it was all said and done. That is what medical insurance is supposed
to be all about. If you enroll in the
program and pay the premiums, it is supposed to prevent catastrophic financial
loss if the need for such medical care arises.
It cannot and is not supposed to insure that you will always be healthy,
therefore, “health care insurance” is a misnomer.
You cannot let a faceless entity, like the
administrations of healthcare facilities or insurance companies determine what
is best for you or your child if you are a parent. You must hire doctors you trust to help you make decisions of
life and death and recovery based on the individual case – not some set of
rules and regulations. The only thing
wrong with the health care system in this country is that people and these
entities have abused it in so many ways.
The result is that too many people think of the system as “broken” and
in need of reforming.
People’s attitudes are what need
reforming! Demands for what never was
or can never be – health security – are ridiculous and unnecessary. I am ashamed of the attitudes of people who
would make such demands.
My point is this: some of the very best medical care is available to everyone in this country. Sometimes you have to look for it, and sometimes you have to go to battle to obtain it. We were willing to suffer extreme financial devastation to save our daughter if that had been required, but it wasn’t. We had purchased a product – medical insurance – that was supposed to prevent that, and we did what was necessary to see that it did.
Our daughter was in recovery for the better
part of a year. She came home in a wheelchair
after weeks at Golden State, and was walking with a cane and a brace soon
afterward. She missed an entire year of
high school, during which we enrolled her in the California Home School
program. She returned to graduate with
her class the next year – healthy and fully recovered. She is currently 27 years old and has only
been to a doctor once since then, for a case of strep throat several years
later. She paid for that visit in cash
What’s In A Birthday?
Deborah Venable
06/27/09
Today is the anniversary of the birth of my oldest child. Her birthday is replete with memories for me
because I became a parent for the first time while her father was in route from
an overseas eight month deployment in the U.S. Navy. He left immediately after she was conceived – first stop,
Vietnam.
In those days, they did not hurry new mothers out the door of the
hospital as soon as possible like they do now, especially not when there had
been complications at birth. My
daughter was fighting for her life after having been resuscitated from a
stillborn birth. I was fighting for my
sanity at not being able to hold her or even see her, except through the glass
of the neonatal nursery, only when I was able to walk there on my own the next
day. Things were a lot different back
then – especially in a military hospital.
Throughout all that frightening day I was in a fog of emotions
and I felt the new weight of responsibility – parenthood. I was pretty much on my own with that
feeling because the Red Cross would not notify my husband since they could not
tell him that we were both fine. That,
I was told, was SOP back then whenever sailors were in the middle of the
ocean.
I was discharged from the hospital four full days after she was
born, but I could not take her home with me.
I still had not held her or even touched her, and I could not make the
long drive to the hospital to even see her.
My daily calls to the hospital were met with negative news until a week
after she was born when the second miracle happened. (The first had been her resuscitation in the delivery room.) The long awaited positive answer came when
they said, “she will be fine.” They had
detached her from life support and were discharging her.
Since she had arrived ahead of schedule, and I had spent almost
everything I had to set up a new home in the ship’s homeport for us, I could
not even afford a bed for her. I
brought her home to a large dresser drawer as a bassinet, but I had made sure
that I would be able to nurse her, and my mother had carefully washed and
ironed an entire layette of hand-me-downs that friends had contributed. I cannot express the sheer joy of holding my
baby and taking care of her for the first time. It was pure magic!
My husband arrived in homeport just days before my daughter’s
actual due date, and I met the ship at the pier with her in my arms. I will never forget the look on his face as
I saw him seconds before he had picked us out of the crowd. He had his buddies helping him look for a
very pregnant wife because he still did not know she was born.
The first thing we did that day was go shopping for a “proper
bed” for our daughter.
We had four more children during the twenty years after that, and
my husband was present for all their births.
Each birthday was miraculous and each one was magical, but the birthday
of Shannon Elizabeth, June 27, 1970 was the birthday of this Professional
Parent and the beginning of my greatest achievement.
Birthdays are a big deal.
They deserve celebration for the continuing miracle of life, which they
represent. That is in our culture and
our American heritage. We celebrate
life.
If you’ve done the math, you will realize that my daughter came
home from the hospital on July 4, 1970 – a full week after her birth, and less
than two hundred years after the celebrated birth of our country.
We celebrate both events in our family.
Happy birthday, Shannon!
You are a shining example of the best promise God ever gave a mother!

This is a picture of Shannon with her father, shortly after her
third birthday. I took it from the
crown of the Statue Of Liberty with the newly completed Twin Towers in the
background.
What’s in a birthday? For one thing, an awful lot of history, and a big reason to celebrate each and every stage of life. Children truly are the Hope For America’s Future, and it is a parent’s job to make sure that they are full with it.
Parenting Sense
Deborah Venable
05/15/09
Common sense has been removed from the accepted
parenting method model. There can be no
other explanation for some of the goofy stuff that make up headlines on the
subject of parenting problems in today’s America. Here’s just a few:
Psychiatric Problems
Of Fathers May Be As Important As Those Of Mothers In Child Outcomes
Wow! This
is groundbreaking news, folks! Let’s DO
pay a little attention to the carriers of that Y chromosome, shall we?
New Moms Find Both
Support and Anxiety As A Group
Where’s that Mommy Club? If you are all about “fitting in” then you’d better join now!
Children
Bullied At School At High Risk Of Developing Psychotic Symptoms
How about those “bullied” by participating in
these stupid studies?
I shouldn’t be at all surprised in a world that
has decided traditional families should be marginalized to the point of
extinction. With an educational system
that has decided man rules- God drools, common sense does not meet the criteria
for common values any more.
In the book, I spend some time discussing the
different roles of Mothers and Fathers in successful parenting because,
traditionally, they ARE very different.
Common sense should tell us that, but modern society has unraveled so
that too many people refuse to believe the truth. Also, society must keep a watchful eye on the phenomena of
“expected” psychiatric problems brought about by becoming a parent. Good grief, we’d better all take our couches
with us everywhere we go – ready at a moment’s notice to be psychoanalyzed!
In the first place, common sense would tell us,
(if it was still being employed) that if we want “normal” child outcomes, we
should not look for abnormalities in every parent. Rather, we should expect parents to be “normal” or the closest
proximity to it. One way of doing this
is to refrain from plugging in a psychiatric diagnosis to parental
behavior.
Segueing into the “group” theory of parental
support, common sense, (that unemployed outcast again) has been tossed in the
same trash heap as individualism as we seek to understand the “anxieties” of
group dynamics associated with parenting.
Since when do parents have to be categorized to “fit in” with other
parents? No wonder kids have a harder
time fitting in these days! As an
individualist, I would naturally see this as a big problem that gets little
press, but unless more people of childbearing age begin to agree with me,
reproduction of the species may as well be confined to the lab!
Now, on to understanding the “bully complex” we
find that psychotic symptoms are likely to be more prevalent in the bullied
than the bully . . . huh? Oh yeah, I recently saw a television drama
that carried that theory forward in the form of a young man who took a gun to
school and went after his tormentors specifically. The author of this particular drama saw fit to end the whole
thing with the needless death of the bullied young man via well-placed bullets
from one of the bullies’ father. Makes
me wonder if any of these folks were among those participating in the studies
on bullying.
From the article:
“Parents have
completed regular postal questionnaires about all aspects of their child’s
health and development since birth (Apr 1991- Dec 1992).
Since the
children were 7 and a half they have attended annual assessment clinics where
they took part in a range of face-to-face interviews, psychological and
physical tests.”
Not something I would want to go through as a
parent OR, more importantly, put my child through – but, hey, that’s just me.
If common sense has really been buried in the
accepted substitute for parenting these days, perhaps the headstone should
appropriately read: Here Lies Humanity – R.I.P. in a Godless Land.
Rights Or Leftovers?
Deborah Venable
03/19/09
The vulnerability of parenthood is showing as liberal courts
dictate more and more decisions out of the hands of caring, concerned
parents. Morality isn’t governing these
decisions. Neither are traditional
values. The philosophy of collectivism
is. Individual rights and responsibilities
cannot survive if collectivism is to flourish.
Good parenting requires the maintenance of
liberty through individual rights and responsibilities and it requires that
parents embrace and demand individualism.
We do not have children for the purpose of donating them to the
collective state to do with what it will as it grooms them to accept the
slavery of collectivism. So many of our
current social ills can be laid at the doorstep of bad parenting and coercive
state policies that interfere in good parents trying to do their job.
The surge in home schooling and its proven
favorable results cannot be overstated as the continuing decline of education
in this country is bemoaned throughout both the right and the left. Make no mistake, though, home schooling is
in the crosshairs of liberal thought, for the vast majority of home schooling
parents are individualists.
While public schools have become more dangerous
places for children, physically, mentally, and emotionally, parents must risk their
individual rights just to keep their children out of them and in a safe, home
environment. Something is very wrong
with this reality. All the
collectivists want to do is throw more money into the schools and make it
harder for individual states and communities to control these educational
environments.
The caveat, the bribe, the seducer is the
almighty dollar.
The idea that parents need government
permission to educate their own children is worse than absurd in a free
society. Children being raised in a
happy, moral, traditional family setting are members of an endangered species
these days. While the left tries to do
everything in its power to wrench traditional and religious values away from
families, our individual rights are demonized, via the government school
system, as selfish and insensitive to the global community.
From global warming/climate change – call it
what you will, to the homosexual agenda and political correctness that gets
preached in public schools and the institutes of higher learning, parents are
told that these subjects are necessary to complete the well-rounded education
of their children. How you feel about
that doesn’t matter to the moral relativists that make up the philosophical
left in this country.
If YOUR ideas of a well-rounded education
include moral rules, especially those dictated by Judeo-Christian values, those
are shunned and prohibited in today’s educational system. I ask you, what is well-rounded about that?
What do you think harms a child’s psyche more -
being told that promiscuous sex, abortion, and homosexuality is wrong, or that
the child’s very existence on the planet is harmful to the environment? What do you think makes them stronger –
learning to defend themselves and others against evil, or learning to accept
evil as normal?
What do you think is more important for you as
a parent – to demand your individual rights, or accept leftovers from obvious
socialism?
Suffer Little Children
Deborah Venable
11/26/08
The responsibility of parenting is the single most important
responsibility that anyone can ever undertake.
That is my belief and I do not state it lightly. It is an individual responsibility that
carries over into every other facet of life.
From the family of one’s origin, to the family one builds and the
community he joins or associates with, the importance of good parenting cannot
be understated.
Teaching responsibility is perhaps the most debated subject among
parents and experts alike. The lessons
should begin at the moment of cognizance, but some would put them off until
much later – too late, in fact. The
first lesson is a simple one and oh so important for the rest of a person’s
life. Each individual is responsible
for his or her own happiness. That is
the lesson, but how do you teach it in an environment that often does not
accept the fact?
Self-discipline can actually breed happiness and contentment with
one’s self. The knowledge that you can
somewhat control how you feel about yourself and those around you is empowering
to say the least. But does this lesson
get taught when childhood misbehavior too often goes undisciplined? Or, what’s even worse, when expectations for
good behavior are absent in the eyes of parents and society alike, the lesson
of irresponsibility becomes the replacement.
Let’s face it once and for all – raising children with moral
responsibility requires a moral compass rooted in natural law and inspired by
faith. Faith is, after all, the
wellspring of happiness. Religious
faith is taking a beating in our evolving socialist society, however. Parents who try to teach lessons rooted in
their faith are overruled by society that is hell bent on marginalizing the
“religious right” and enabling secularism whenever it can.
People of faith are constantly asked to compromise their beliefs
to feed the socialist beast, but there can be no compromise. Tolerance exists on only one side of this
debate, and tolerance does not mean complete capitulation. Parents must stand firm in their beliefs and
fight for the very heart, soul, and happiness of their children.
I would simply remind those of Christian faith especially that
they do have a responsibility to see that their children are not “shielded”
from learning from the teachings of their own faith:
But Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid
them not, to come onto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
- Matthew
19:14
Conceiving a child should never be viewed as a “punishment” but that
idea has taken root in our society and has continued to blossom into the
poisonous mentality that overrules reason and debases humanity. We could be on the brink of destruction if
this deranged punishment theory is exploited for the purpose of stripping the
last attempts to protect innocent babies from the brutal judgment of selfish
immorality.
Aren’t fifty million plus legal mutilations and murders in
thirty-five years enough?
Scientists who would seek to build the more perfect human through
the slaughter of innocents should beware of a soulless society that may one day
demand a price too high. Parents, the
future is truly up to you.
Quick Fix Parenting
Deborah Venable
09/29/08
Some folks approach a parenting manual from the desperate
position of needing a quick fix for their problem child or children. They have identified behavior in their child
that is undesirable and believe that someone else may be more qualified to
“straighten out” their child than they are.
This is truly sad and troubling – especially since there are those who
seem to think they have all the answers and can readily supply parents with
these quick fixes.
Like anything else worthwhile, successful parenting requires time
and patience. The quick fix of “quality
time” will not replace the tireless hours of quantity time that parents should
spend with their children as a matter of course. Parents and children learn to depend on each other, trust each
other, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company without the hype of special
circumstance that surrounds the quality time concept. Making appointments to put children first is not more desirable
than evolving to that conclusion early on in parenting.
Love is undoubtedly the main component in a happy, stable family,
and the loving feelings of parent for child and child for parent should come
quite naturally. Whenever there are
problems in the relationship, we seldom hear that love is an absent
ingredient. The troubled parent may say
something like, “I love my child with all my heart and I’m sure he/she loves
me, but we just can’t seem to communicate.”
Believe me - there is no quick fix for that because love is spelled,
TIME in any relationship, but especially in this one.
I’m not about to pretend that I have read every book on parenting
ever written, but I have read enough of them to know that I do not agree with
much of what most have to say. I’m
always suspicious of the “if you do this, then this will be the result”
approach to parenting. It was only when
parenting became a science instead of a natural instinct handed down through
culture that the job became too hard for some and resulted in failure far too
often. I think it is safe to say that
most well known “authorities” on parenting turn out to be doctors or teachers
at least. This probably explains the
“science” of parenting techniques that is so abundant these days.
If there is one thing that children need more than anything else
it is a consistency and normalcy from their parents. Oddly enough, this turns out to be the very thing that parents
also need from their children. In other
words, if we can count on “knowing” our children and having them also know us,
half the job of successful parenting has been accomplished. If you do not or cannot spend the unhurried
time for your family, then your brand of love will not insure that
all-important successful outcome.
Navigating the Maze
Deborah Venable
09/10/08
Setting up a successful parent/child relationship requires that parents
learn a new language – the language of parent/child communication. It is a difficult and unique language to
master – unique for each and every child and parent. It is all at once a tactile, auditory, and visual language
bolstered by acute awareness of taste and smell as well. It takes all the senses you have, along with
a healthy dose of common sense, to serve as a dependable guide through that
maze of childhood. (If you are
unfortunate enough to be missing a sense or two, you can, of course, still be a
great parent the same way you are a great person – by utilizing the senses you
have to their fullest potential.)
Here’s the deal – communication is a two-way street and as stated
before, a multi-sensory undertaking. If
parents make the mistake of thinking that their outgoing line of verbal
communication is more important than any of the others in navigating the maze
of successful parenting, they will eventually hit a brick wall before the child
makes it through. Long before a child
can speak, he is feeling, watching, listening, tasting, smelling, and voicing
his opinion. Many of the pathways that
will eventually make up a child’s intelligence and behavior patterns are
already formed before he masters the auditory language and his very life may
depend on the perceptions he forms before he ever says “Mama or Dada.”
If humans could remain as in-tuned to the world around them as
they are in the beginning of their lives, humanity could prosper far beyond
anything we can imagine in social communication today. The reason they usually don’t is a
combination of neglect and selective sensory overload that literally can shut
down the lines of communication for both parent and child. Modern parents have been told that they must
keep a child occupied, introduce every imaginable stimulant for his eyes and
ears and fingers, and force an artificial social environment on him at an
ever-earlier age in order for him to reach his full potential. Academia almost totally overlooks the
necessity for a child to learn to occupy himself in a quiet but happy
environment.
Childhood imagination is a wonderful thing in its ability to
transport a child along any scenario to any situation he chooses, but too many
child experts seem to think that imaginary “friends” are the first sign of a
problem reality for a child. An
imaginary friend is the only true friend a very young child can have, because
it is the only relationship that allows flawless communication. He is, in essence, getting in-tuned to
himself before he projects a personality to the rest of the world. He is deciding whether he will project
happiness, sadness, anger, fright, or defiance to his real world. In this decision, he will ultimately reflect
what he learns from early parental communication.
When a child begins to speak he will immediately know whether he
is being received with interest. An old
adage goes something like this: Parents
spend the first year or so of a child’s life teaching him to walk and talk, and
the rest of his childhood telling him to sit down and shut up. Isn’t that the truth though? But here is the kicker – children set the
stage for communications with their parents.
They call all the shots in the beginning. They will come to you at the most inopportune times and babble a
mile a minute about subjects that you may not see the importance in, but if you
send them away or fail to listen intently and respond intelligently, you are
communicating negatively. If this
pattern is set in the beginning, don’t count on “being there” for them when you
expect them to come to you with their “real” problems. They certainly won’t count on it either.
Many a parent has felt powerless to help a child through the maze
because of this unconsciously constructed brick wall.
Guiding Through the Maze
Deborah Venable
08/26/08
If you have decided to go against the grain of
some of the accepted thought on child rearing, you have responded and not
ignored your crying baby. You are
there. He is still crying. Now, what do you do?
You provide the resistance to his crying by
looking for that one magic thing that will stop it. If it isn’t your mere presence or attending to any noticeable
physical needs, i.e. hunger, thirst, dry diaper, his need may still be physical. Upset stomach perhaps. More often than not, his need is emotional –
fear, anger, or general unhappiness. Of
one thing you can be absolutely certain.
The need is driven by selfishness.
You cannot, therefore, match that selfishness with any feelings or
actions of your own selfishness. This
is a hard thing for some parents to accept.
That is why I say, the path of least resistance is to allow the baby to
cry until he stops on his own or cries himself to sleep. You can find this advice everywhere and
rationalize the use of it.
I could go into a litany of anecdotal evidence
of the many techniques I used throughout my many years of parenting my own
children to find “the magic” but it is much more important that parents find
their own magic. It’s there if you look
for it.
The next big stumbling block to parenting is
dealing with that thing the experts call, “separation syndrome” – the indignant
reaction of a child being left – anywhere – by his parent. Justified separation of parents from the
presence of their children abounds in the normal setting, but none of it is
justified or normal to a child.
Period. Parents who refuse to
accept this will be lead on a guiltless path of least resistance. They will walk away time after time from
their crying child.
For those times that separation absolutely
cannot be helped, when the child cannot accompany the parent for good reason,
the separation should not be accented.
In other words, the child should not witness the actual separation. The selected caretaker in your absence
should be a more than willing accomplice in occupying the child while you slip
away unnoticed. Remember, a young
child’s needs are totally selfish. If
he is getting positive attention, that is really all he cares about. When your absence is noticed later, the caretaker’s
job of occupying him will be easier if your leaving was not witnessed. You have supplied resistance to his selfish
nature in the most harmless way possible.
The fewer instances the child has to deal with
this separation syndrome at an early age, the better – no doubt. Parents cannot justify letting others raise
their child on a regular basis and have any hope of positive influence over
that child’s formative years. The
experts certainly do not always agree with that one, but common sense will bear
it out as the child turns his back on you at a time when your influence is
desperately needed later in his life.
The Path Of Least
Resistance
Deborah Venable
07/09/08
Exploring the subject of parenting in modern
times can be hazardous to one’s health.
If taken seriously, the job of being a good parent can overwhelm anyone
with doubt and worry, but those are feelings that must not rule the heart or
order the mind when dealing with our children.
We must exude more happiness than sadness, more hope than despair, and
certainly more confidence than fear if we are to make a lasting impression on
the young lives in our charge.
The same thing can be said of any profession
one hopes to succeed in, but all too often parents can forget that parenting is
indeed a profession. Anything else you
engage in after having assumed the role of parent is secondary. Oddly enough, that is another point that
many modern parents refuse to take seriously.
In doing much of the research for Professional
Parenting, Raising the Hope For America’s Future, I found that academic thought
on the subject tends to lead parents down the path of least resistance when
dealing directly with their children.
Parenting is too often thought of as conducting an artificial power
toward a willing reciprocal instead of guiding an entity of resistance through
a maze of obstacles. The latter is the
true nature of the job.
If parents wake up one day to problems with a
previously “good” kid, (oddly enough about the time that kid reaches puberty), they
should consider the possibility that their parenting techniques have been
following the path of least resistance.
By the time a child reaches the age of puberty he should have all the
tools he needs to find his own way out of the maze – tools supplied by his
dedicated guides who met his every resistance head-on. Those last few years of dependent childhood
should be a joy for parents – a time to watch the flower bloom and the roots
take hold in the solid ground you have provided.
Let’s take a look at one of those flowers that
fail to bloom. Rewind to the
beginning. Taking care of a newborn is
an awesome responsibility because he is totally dependent. He is also born totally selfish. At first, his selfishness is satisfied by
all the immediate attention he receives from his adoring parents. It doesn’t take long, though, before the new
wears off for the parents and the perceived drudgery begins. Academic thought kicks in and parents can
begin to rationalize a setting aside of the child’s center of attention status
as an attempt to prevent “spoiling” of that “sweet natured” baby.
Number one: the baby is not sweet natured! That is something he must learn from his
parents and he starts taking notes from the very beginning!
Number two: the right kind of attention never
spoiled a child. Ignoring that child
will definitely spoil him.
So, one of the very first decisions that
parents must make is whether to follow the path of least resistance when a baby
cries out for attention. Academics will
more often than not advise that babies should be allowed to cry themselves to
sleep and that parents should not feel guilty about walking away from a crying
child. If you follow that path, just be
prepared for the possibility of a “wake up” later in that child’s life. You may find that the child has learned not
to confide in you or expect you to be there if he needs you. He will have replaced you with something or
someone else that could be at the root of his “problems”.
Book Review For
Nightmare
Deborah Venable
06/08/08
The Nightmare That
Is Public Education is the indictment brought by the most credible
of accusers – Dr. Renato C. Nicolai, ED.D, in his new book by the same
name. Subtitled, An Expose of What Really Happens In Public
Education, (publisher iUniverse, Inc.) the book is an in-depth study of
the system, as it exists, with suggestions of how it should exist all along the
way.
Dr. Nicolai brings the unquestionable
credibility of 38 years experience working from inside the public education system
as both a teacher and a principal – not to mention various positions throughout
the system as counselor, advisor, negotiator, and teacher training expert. His analysis of what makes a good teacher is
spot on if you know anything at all about the profession or care anything at
all about the education of children.
While I do not know Dr. Nicolai personally, I
have known examples of every teacher he describes, and I was married for over
thirty-seven years to an example he calls, “Excellent” so reading this text did
not introduce me to “new ground” or unimagined revelations.
His mastery of the English language shines as
he relates his personal observations and opinions about the reality of our
public education system, but this is not an easy text to read. Dr. Nicolai moves seamlessly between
anecdotal language and “educationese,” professional terminology for the
language of educators, to an extent that probably he doesn’t even recognize. He is by no means condescending to his
audience, but I am sure that many might well perceive him in that fashion. (This can be considered my own personal
indictment of “many” readers who might pick up this book with the intention of
being somewhat entertained or sophomorically informed.)
This book has been needed for decades. That is the bottom line. Going into any of the specifics of the
information contained in it here in this review could not prove that statement
to a greater extent than this: the
importance of enthusiasm in teaching, the necessity of competition throughout
any system of learning, and the absolute dedication to seeking and living the
truth for students and educators alike are the seeds painstakingly planted by
the author.
Every parent, teacher, and citizen concerned
for the future of America’s generations should take the simple initiative of
reading The Nightmare That Is Public
Education. Thank you, Dr.
Nicolai for writing it!
I recently read and reviewed this book at the
author’s request. I decided to place
the review here and archive it with my Professional Parenting articles, since
it fits well within the parameters of this feature. Please feel free to visit Dr. Nicolai’s website and read some
excerpts from his book there. While you
are at it, say a prayer for his son, Matthew, an Infantryman in the U.S. Army,
who is awaiting almost certain deployment to a hostile zone. Dr. Nicolai also maintains another website here where he offers a
valuable service.
Setting Up Normal
Deborah Venable
05/10/08
I spend a lot of time trying to convince
parents of small children just how important it is to maintain consistency in
the home environment they create for their children. Lord knows these days that can be a tall order contrasted to the
upheaval we see around us in society.
But the important thing to remember is that whatever you set up as
“normal” will be grounding for children – the constant that they will use to
compare to the world around them.
How many times have we heard interviews with
people who have survived some crisis in their lives, or even criminals who have
gone on to commit atrocities themselves reflect on their childhood experiences
and make a reference to those experiences being what they considered
normal? Specifically in cases of
long-running child abuse, we find that the abused end up being abusers in adult
life in so many cases. Of course there
are exceptions, but the “normal” response to parenting is to draw upon your own
experiences as a child. These
experiences may affect your parenting positively or negatively depending on
what you have worked out as right or wrong – and depending on what you perceive
to be normal.
The very salvation of future generations
depends on the parenting of each generation.
It is as simple as that. A
mistake in “setting up normal” for the majority of only one generation can have
a devastating effect on the future “health” of a society. I believe that we are on the brink of that
majority mistake.
Too many parents have given their children over
to a public education system that has continually lowered the bar for “normal”
and is insisting on being the main influence in the lives of children. Normal for these children will reflect the
collective thought of government mandate – not the individual value influenced
by moral decency and the cherished traditions of strong family building.
We have two choices where the deplorable public
education system is concerned. We can either
change it or abandon it. I’ve been
waiting for evidence of positive changes for decades now, and have witnessed
only negative ones. I abandoned it for
the completion of my youngest two children’s education via home schooling and
have never regretted that choice.
The normal education of children must begin
with loving parents who promote real family values. As clichéd as that sounds, it is at the heart of our national
decency and our unequaled success.
Setting up normal for families in these trying times requires a strong
moral character that knows what is right and is not afraid to make that crystal
clear to children.
For example, it is
not normal for children to perceive sex as a recreational right, but adults
have continually modeled that behavior to the extent that we have children
selling themselves short and putting their lives and futures in jeopardy to
follow the example of indecency. The
recent spate of children sending and posting to the internet pictures of
themselves immersed in sexual innuendo is anything but comforting. Where are the parents telling their children
that this is wrong – not normal behavior?
Silent
Protest
Deborah
Venable
04/05/08
April is a gold star month for socialist
educators’ agenda.
It devotes a full week, (National Environmental
Education week – April 13-19 this year) to the theme of “Carbon Footprints” –
that ridiculous idea that a third party transfer of guilt can be purchased and
stave off man’s disastrous effect on planet Earth. This study in carbon footprints includes a whole “new math”
instruction complete with “calculators” that measure personal carbon
consumption and output. Never mind that
real math and science courses have produced less than admirable results in
public education for decades now, children are being taught the questionable
science of global warming, (recently renamed “man-made climate change”) and the
fantasy math of carbon footprint calculations.
Next on docket for priorities in socialist
education is the controversial “Day Of Silence” – (April 25th) now
being promoted in schools all over the country to bring attention to the
“bullying” and “harassment” of homosexuals that goes on in schools. That’s the stated purpose anyway. The desired effect is simply to normalize
the homosexual lifestyle and teach it as gospel through the fun use of
silence. They really don’t mind the
bullying of Christian thought on the subject though. Of that you can be sure.
These two events are so deceptive at their
core. I have absolutely no problem with
teaching children to be kind and considerate to everyone around them when they
are in school. I have no problem with
punishment for those who are not – but to insist that children be taught to
accept the homosexual lifestyle as normal, (and that IS the agenda) is morally
repulsive to me. Likewise teaching
questionable scientific theory as fact and forcing a sense of guilt about the
human race’s impact on earth is also morally repugnant to me.
Should parents be concerned about these events
taking place in their children’s classrooms?
I think so, because the liberal agenda will attempt to bulldoze any
parental priorities on the handling of these subjects. They are not harmless subjects to a
free-thinking, capitalist society. And
the specifics of both subjects should be hands-off to educators because they
are not supposed to teach children what to think – they are supposed to teach
them simply how to think. All points of
view must be applied to accomplish that, and you can rest assured that will not
happen.
That schools would even attempt lessons in these
subjects punctuates the educational system’s attitudes towards parents. They loathe parental influence that refutes
the socialist message. Better that
children learn these lessons from parents – even if they embrace the socialist
message – than from a public system that presents only it.
Make no mistake, if the socialists are wrong on
either or both of these subjects, as I most certainly believe they are, the
negative effects on future generations will be unfathomable. If they are right, our government as it was
originally conceived could do nothing to stop global warming or negative
attitudes on open homosexuality. Not
without becoming a much worse tyranny than any nation before it.
A healthy respect for the environment and human
understanding of sexuality are subjects that must be trusted to responsible
parents – not misconstrued by standardized collective thinking.
In “silent” protest, I will leave you with these two
thoughts:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent
about things that matter.”
Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.
“Silence is the ultimate weapon of power.”
Charles De
Gaulle
Raised In A Barn
Deborah Venable
03/16/08
Impeccable manners would seem to indicate to
the world that a child had received excellent parenting, and accepting that
premise, the opposite, (bad manners), would be just a strong an indicator. Manners training, after all, involves fine
tuning social graces that will always help more than hinder a person’s
interaction with the rest of society.
My mother had a favorite saying when
admonishing my brother or me for the occasional slip in our normally good
manners. She would say, “Were you
raised in a barn?”
Since rudeness is the natural human condition,
raising well-mannered children requires a conscious effort on the part of
parents to alter nature. (I get raised
eyebrows on this one all the time, but the truth of it is undeniable
none-the-less.) One point I make in the
book is that babies are born totally selfish because that is built in to the
survival instinct. My mother’s
admonishment makes sense because it equates a rude, selfish person to an animal
without “proper” upbringing. Teaching a
child to consider the feelings of others is perhaps the hardest lesson to teach
and to learn. Bucking nature is always
tough.
If you have a tendency to be a selfish person,
then parenting will be the hardest job you will ever undertake, and your chance
for success is greatly reduced. A child
learns much more from watching your interactions with him and others than he
will ever learn from what you tell him.
The tricky part in removing the natural selfish
tendencies from the human instinct of survival is to do so leaving the rest of
that survival instinct intact.
Unselfishly dealing with others and using good manners must not leave a
child vulnerable to harm. The wonder of
humanity is that ability for humans to grow a conscience and still maintain
emotional and physical stability. I
believe that the driving force in the goodness of humanity can only be
explained by an inherent spiritual influence.
Animals can also be trained to have good manners, but children are by
far the greatest challenge.
Humans are much more apt to get through
childhood free of most rude behavior if they think of it as their idea to act
unselfishly most of the time. Good
manners, the “please”, “thank you”, “yes sir” and “no ma’am” is learned by rote
and good habit, but the sensitivity to the feelings of others part is most
successfully learned by example. The
first “feelings” a child can identify are naturally his own, therefore the way
a parent attends to those feelings can make or break the rest of manners
training forever. The hard part is
teaching the child how to identify his effect on the feelings of others. That is why I believe that discipline must
be done without the absence of emotion.
This flies in the face of time out or cool down theories of child
rearing. Children must always know what
emotion their actions will spark, and that sparking “good” emotions will always
be preferable to causing sadness or anger in their parents and others around
them.
Patience and tolerance are necessary
ingredients to good character, and these things are not naturally occurring in
the human child – so, they had better be the backbone of parental character or
their children may as well be raised in a barn.
Conscientious
Objections
Deborah Venable
02/24/08
Not only will the
liberal philosophy seek to destroy the soul of free individuals, it regularly
shoots poison darts into the conscience of parents who would try to preserve
their rights while saving some freedom for their children to inherit. It is a travesty to believe that liberal
politicians, educators or other self-proclaimed societal “leaders” are the
least bit interested in the welfare of your children no matter what
philosophical thought process drives your actions and beliefs. Strong statements I know, but 100% truthful!
States on both
coasts of America and all throughout the heartland are battlefields for
parental rights, and those ongoing battles are producing a collateral damage
with the potential to destroy any semblance of this “free” nation of ours. Most “battles” in our history have made
allowances for conscientious objectors, (COs for short), but this one is making
no such allowances! If you refuse to
arm yourself, your children will pay the price, even as they watch their
parents lose their lives or their freedom to the “big guns” of government
control.
The fate of the
innocents depends entirely on how quickly we can defeat what some have called
“liberal fascism”. (See Jonah
Goldberg’s new book.)
More than one front
exists in this battle for our children.
Here are just two:
Phyllis Schlafly’s
recent article, It Takes a Village.
. . To Undermine Parenthood, speaks mainly to the effects of state laws’ insistence on
controlling medical decisions (both physical and mental) concerning
children. If you are uninformed enough
to believe that the rush to “insure” all children under government provided
health care is a good thing, get ready for a rude awakening! If you have no conscientious objections to
any vaccine that the state mandates your child to be “shot up” with, then you
probably won’t mind having your child submit to regular mental evaluations
either. Better keep the kids “happy”
though, or they may have to wear a label of mental and emotional deficiency for
the rest of their lives!
I hate to have to
keep reminding parents that THEY are responsible for their children, but God
help us all, too many just don’t get it!
Here’s the second
front: You would have to be deaf, dumb,
and blind, or curled up in a fetal position to not be aware of the battle for
your child’s morals today. This is just one source of information on how far a
state is willing to go to wrest your child’s morals from your careful
tutelage. An abundance of evidence
exists if you are willing to do your homework.
The “sexual revolution” begun in the sixties has progressed much farther
than those hippy soldiers of change could have possibly foreseen.
It’s not just a hate
America, hate God crowd any more – it’s a hate man, hate woman, hate normal
crowd that will not be happy until no one remembers what right and wrong or
good and evil are!
Let me just stick my
neck right out there now and state this:
Men and women are different, but they are the ONLY two sexes that were
created to inhabit the earth! Any other
identification of “gender” or “preference” is abnormal and should not be taught
as normal!
If a child is born
with a deformity – a birth defect – it is truly sad. It happens. I
wholeheartedly believe in supporting the victims of such unfortunate
circumstances with compassion and understanding. It is heartbreaking when someone has to go through life with an
extra burden to bear, especially if it is disabling. That is how we should explain homosexuality to children if we
believe that homosexuals are born and are not the result of a “lifestyle
choice”. Hey, I didn’t dub
homosexuality with the “sexual preference” label, but for those who assume it,
they must be willing to admit that they are NOT normal!
What is so hard to
understand about that? Why must we
tread on eggshells around the subject, subvert our feelings of pity or disgust
for such a “choice” and ignore the very real religious and other conscientious
objections to accepting these people as normal? Why? Because government
is telling us that we MUST! Not only
that, but government is also telling us that we will be prosecuted under unjust
laws if we fail to teach our children all about the various lifestyles they may
choose for themselves – including homosexuality!
I am sick to death
of the pussyfooting on this subject!
I’m a CO here, and I’ve got rights too – don’t I?
Gaining Trust
Deborah Venable
02/08/08
My philosophy of successful
child rearing is built around the absolute necessity of parent/child
trust. In the book, I go into great
detail of exactly how I apply all the components of building that trust to the
ultimate job of parenting, and explore possible effects any lack of trust, (by
parent or child), can cause. Parents
mistakenly assume that children must earn trust to gain privileges as they get
older, and that by removing privileges when children fail, lessons can be
taught. In this world of ours where
everyone seems to be so concerned with environment, it is truly amazing to me
that any thinking individual could believe that good lessons could be learned
from authority figures trying to artificially control another’s individual
environment. The withholding of previously
given privileges attempts to do just that, doesn’t it?
So, you are really
going to tell me that “grounding” punishments teach a child trust? Grounding is something we adults do to
individuals who commit crimes against society.
Otherwise known as jail, prison, incarceration, and that all-time
favorite “house arrest” – you get the picture.
Now, we all know that “criminal” behavior is more likely to be repeated
by those previously punished for it than by people who do not commit crime in
the first place. History is replete
with examples of the “repeat offender” syndrome, (otherwise known as “once a
criminal always a criminal). Our
“correctional facility” mentality of rehabilitating criminal behavior has a
long way to go in proving the effectiveness of punishing criminals via the
“time out” theory.
I hope I haven’t
lost any of you at this point because there is a purpose to my correlation
here. Privileges are attained with
age. That is the standard that society
has set up and followed for a very long time now. They are not, therefore, earned through behavior, nor do they
wait for parents to decide when a child can suddenly be trusted to interact
socially with the rest of society within certain limits. Most parenting experts are trying to influence
child rearing with the same standards that apply to the criminal justice
system. They expect “crimes” to be
committed, but they think that stripping privileges of the “offenders” will
rehabilitate criminal behavior. Does it
work? Of course, in some instances –
but in far too many cases the behavior is not rehabilitated at all.
So a child’s
behavior, for some reason or other, disappoints his parents to the extent that
they feel a punishment is in order. The
most accepted punishment these days seems to be, “you’re grounded” for x amount
of time, (until we can trust you again?)
It is a punishment all right, and the child may even consider it a just
punishment for whatever he has done, but will it result in the bond of trust
being strengthened or weakened?
Grounding removes the privilege of free movement within the child’s
attained environment. Usually he can’t
visit friends or have visitors. He
can’t go to any previously appointed social events or perhaps drive the car if
he has been used to that privilege. In
other words, he can’t be trusted to behave within the expected parameters of
his age. And then we follow this up
with a time factor, which reinstates trust?
But just as in the case of “rehabilitated” criminals, we know that
mistrust is still there – even after the incarceration period has passed. Ex-cons have a record of mistrust, which
prevents them from such things as legally owning guns or associating with other
ex-cons or even voting. Should children
in training to be responsible adults really be treated like criminals?
One point that I
cannot stress enough is that trust is not a one-way street. If you want to be able to trust your child,
he or she must be able to trust you first.
Trust building starts from the moment of birth and continues until it is
betrayed – if that should happen.
Repairing broken trust is a lot harder than building it securely from
the ground up. When you tell a child
that you trust him, you had better mean it because you are always asking to be
trusted each time you interact with that child. You should expect your child to be trustworthy because you have
gained his trust in you.
Changes in the moral
standards and values of society have done much to erode the ability for parents
and children to gain trust in each other.
In the last fifty years we have gone from trusting until betrayed to
insisting on insurance against betrayal.
The “permission slip” and “truth test” mentality has relegated trust to
the back of the bus. Everyone is truly
guilty until proven innocent these days.
One example: try to get a job today without having to pass a drug test,
background check, (including a credit check probably), or any number of degrees
“proving” your ability to do the job.
Has this made our work force more reliable? Even more laughable if you figure the illegal alien influence on
the work force, eh? But everyone has
taken this all in stride and accepts it as progress! Children learn early on that they cannot and will not be trusted
on face value, and the job of parenting has gotten much harder.
If this article has
made you think from a slightly different angle than you have thought about
parenting in the past, please let me know.
Even if you totally disagree with my conclusions, I would appreciate knowing
your reasons. The purpose of the book
and these articles is to encourage thoughtful individuals to examine the
subject of parenting from different perspectives than most do. I believe that the key to saving the future
of this wonderful country is totally linked to our ability to reclaim and
preserve our true American Heritage and the all important family values that
built it.
Who Is the Target?
Deborah Venable
01/19/08
Even though I have
written reams about parental loss of rights in this country, I have the feeling
that many just do not take the problem seriously. I seldom get feedback, and it is almost as if parents are asleep
at the wheel. I certainly don’t mean
this as a blanket indictment because I’m sure that many are concerned about parental
rights, but just don’t consider themselves to be “in the crosshairs” of
government control – yet.
After all, the
government isn’t about to break down your door and forcibly remove your child
from your home just because someone else has decided that your decisions
concerning your child’s well being should be overruled – right? That wouldn’t happen in this country to
caring parents.
Think again and read this article!
I have been a parent
for almost forty years now, but my youngest child is not quite an “adult”
according to “the law”. I’ve never
backed down from anything in my life, never let fear rule my actions – in other
words, I refuse to be intimidated. But
my comfort level will be greatly increased as soon as my child’s birthday rolls
around this year – because then he will be an adult! Of course I still have underage grandchildren, but they have
capable parents to fight the battles for their future.
When my husband
passed away I felt totally alone in the battle to get my son all grown up and
educated without the impact of any socialist attempt to usurp my parental
rights and authority. My daily prayer
has been that God will allow me to get this job done right. You may think that I suffer from undue
paranoia, but remember, the only reason I left a state I loved – that we had
planned to live out our days in – was the oppressive change we witnessed in the
social climate there. Had we not had
any young children, it would not have mattered as much. We were very happy in California, but
Alabama offered us more freedom.
In much the same way
that those long-ago European ancestors packed up and risked their lives and
everything they owned, leaving behind lands that they loved, to search for
freedom, so we made the modern day trek back to breathe freer air. If that sounds a bit pretentious, it is
still the truth. But even here, I see
things going down the tubes. This state
is falling into lockstep with the suffocating onslaught of socialism. I noticed the signs almost immediately with
the attack on Chief Justice, Roy Moore, soon after we arrived here. The public school policy of “zero
tolerance”, (what an oxymoron!) is alive and well here, as is the global
warming, anti-self defense, behavior modification via drugs, etc., etc. mantra
that has so invaded the government school system everywhere else.
I know why all this
is happening. With each year that
passes, the U.S. Constitution and particularly the Tenth Amendment to it is
being buried deeper and deeper under apathy and ignorance. States’ Rights means little and individual
sovereignty even less. On the national
level, America’s sovereignty is being herded closer and closer to the abyss of
globalism and international law.
Man’s law has
overtaken and bypassed man’s unalienable rights – nature’s law – for so many
years that it will take a miracle to reverse the damage. The miracle does exist, though. Every time a child is born to caring parents
that will provide a loving and secure family environment for that child to
thrive in, the miracle gains momentum.
God bless those who
have received His greatest blessing! It
is up to you to take the target off your child’s back.
The Purpose Of Schools
Deborah Venable
12/17/07
Anybody care to give
this one a shot? I mean put a “what is”
in front of the title of this article and proceed to answer the question. What kind of answers are we likely to get?
The purpose of schools
is to educate individuals beyond their current knowledge. If you come up with anything else for an
answer, I would probably have a problem with it. You see, the education of children falls squarely on the
shoulders of their parents or guardians.
Period. Look it up - in any free
culture and you will see that this is correct.
But this responsibility has been shirked by too many parents and assumed
by too much government. In some cases
it has been confiscated from parents – along with ungodly sums of money to pay
for it!
You might say, but what
about specialized schools, adult education, college, for goodness sake?
All should still fit
the above definition, and all are very big business in the modern world. And that is the bottom line. Schools are very big business, huge
sinkholes of money and power, and jealously guarded by those who benefit
most. Where advanced schooling was once
a choice pursued by a much smaller percentage of the human population, it has
now become a necessary commodity and a coercive tool of control in the hands of
godless governments.
So, what should NOT be
the purpose of schools?
The first
misconception about the purpose of schools must be directed at parents and
guardians. Schools should NOT be used
as babysitters. Their purpose is not to
direct children’s attitudes, morals, or spirits toward any pre-defined agenda
for any political or social goal unless all of those buying the services of the
specific school want such a product included in the package. (Such as in the case of private religious
schools.) Exposure to a full course of
various political, social, and religious views should be available at any
so-called public school however.
Exposure does not mean beating kids over the head with any of it and it
requires the teachers and the material to be honest about personally held
beliefs.
Education should not
be expensive in a monetary sense. If
education were not such a big business, corruption would not be as prevalent
within its institutions. This may seem like
a too simple solution to a too complex problem, but it is a solution. I do not expect it to ever be employed. Society has been brainwashed to believe that
teachers do not make enough money, schools are always in need of funding, and
educational resources are scarce, while in truth, education is one of the most
expensive drains on the public and private coffers this country has ever
known!
Now I will be honest
with you, I do not believe that the worst things about the education business
can ever be eradicated, but the resulting products of the system can possibly
be improved upon, if the problem is ever properly acknowledged. For instance, in a “for profit” private
school the gap between the worker bees and the kings and queens of the business
is not so large that mediators are needed to bridge it. Teachers’ Unions are the scourge of the
whole public education process, and those “mediators” have gotten rich off the
big business of education. Gung ho
“members” in the “worker bee” class have grown lazy in their well-protected
hives so that the product they are pushing is anything but sweet. A good first step toward improvement would
involve letting the bees do their work on their own merit. Teacher proficiency testing was met with
much disdain if I recall. School boards
everywhere try to rule with an iron fist, which also proceeds to get in the way
of quality comparisons for the resulting product of education. Politics has no place in a good educational
system, but getting it out of a public one is quite impossible. That brings us back to private schools
competing for private dollars. With all
the philanthropy that takes place in this country, I would think that quality
education funding for everyone that needs it could be had without government
involvement to the extent that it is.
The fact still remains that when we are directly paying for a product,
the chance that we will insist on quality first is far greater than when it is
offered up on the alter of government entitlement.
The real purpose of
schools is to insure a quality future for the benefit of everyone. The product had better live up to that
goal.
Competition vs.
Self-Esteem
Deborah Venable
11/15/07
In a truly free
society, self-esteem follows a prescribed course of learning self-worth through
experience. It is a very personal
learning experience that happens naturally and is certainly not dependent on
artificial stimuli exerted by mandated protocols of social pressure or
government education. Achievement is
earned through effort and not necessarily awarded on a standardized scale. When these criteria are obviously not being
met, competition is meaningless and freedom is being restrained.
In our current rush to
endorse political correctness in all sectors of American society, American children
are the first victims of the “frog soup” theory of social change. For some reason the current crop of
educators in this country seem to believe that a child’s self-esteem is the
“glass jaw” of his very existence.
Children are not born with fragile or delicate psyches. A delicate psyche must be learned, and
sparing a child from honest competition is the very best way to insure that he
learns victimhood, entitlement mentality, and class envy. The only place these lessons would have any
value would be in a slave society!
Survival of any
species is instinctual and dependent on the individual’s ability to compete and
in some cases even cooperate, but cooperation is not being encouraged when
competition is deliberately demonized as demoralizing to “fragile psyches” and
avoided as an intellectual growth tool.
The ability to compete honestly is perhaps the most important tool a
child will ever need to succeed and maintain a healthy psyche. The fact that modern educators and a
politically motivated society would obfuscate such a valuable fact is proof
positive that the darker goal of behavior modification is at work to bring
about social change from that of a free society to the aforementioned slave
variety.
The “soup” has begun
to smell.
But here is a curious
by product of this social experiment. A
transference seems to be occurring at an alarming rate. Too many parents have taken it upon
themselves to compete, not against other parents, but against children! They refuse to let their children fight
their own battles, but they will insist that all the “equalizing” weapons they
can get their hands on are used against the children of others. (Example #1: Since my child has been taught
never to fight, any child who dares to disagree with my child is a bully!) Example #2: Since my child is just as smart
as anybody else’s, the test is flawed and the teacher is prejudiced against my
child.
The worst outcome of
this whole deception is that we have an alarming percentage of children who
will grow up handicapped in their struggle to survive. And they are growing up without the
necessary discipline to handle any competition that comes their way, or any
knowledge of what real cooperation is all about. We may think that we are growing a superior class of humanity
that will strive for peace over violence and serenity over conflict, when in
fact the only result will be a weakness of character that will not secure a
bright future for our children.
Here’s the bottom
line; children are the very best examples of this wondrous thing called
humanity. They are born with free
spirits, survival instincts intact, and totally open minds. What happens to them from the moment of
birth until they suddenly find themselves in maturity either amounts to a job
well done by those who have influenced their growth or a pathos of inhuman
abuse along that way.
Real Child Safety
Deborah Venable
06/20/07
It doesn’t take much to get everyone interested
in the subject of child safety – protecting the most vulnerable members of humanity. Trying to get agreement on the best methods
to accomplish this is quite another story.
It seems that common sense has given way to an almost mechanical and
(maniacal if I may be so bold) way of approaching the age old question of, how
can we best protect our children in a world turned upside down?
Here again I will beat a well-worn drum because
it definitely fits in the formula for protecting children. We cannot continue to depend on a
standardization process to accomplish such an important task. It just will not work! We, as parents, cannot turn the job of
protecting our children over to government and social entities and expect them
not to eventually wrest the total responsibility from us – whether or not we
agree with their methods. No one in any
government or social agency is more qualified to protect individual children
than we are as their parents.
Therefore, child safety remains defined by those who have the most to
gain from securing that safety and the most to lose if our hands are tied in
that attempt.
From the moment a child is conceived there are no
guarantees that he or she will be safely ushered into a welcoming world and
allowed to mature to adulthood totally protected from anything that can cause
harm. We all are very aware of this
fact. But the natural human nurturing
instinct is the first and should be the most important safeguard a child
has. That’s right – I said NATURAL
INSTINCT. Every day I see indications
that instinct is being downplayed, ignored, and deliberately destroyed in an
attempt to standardize humanity.
Parental protective and nurturing instinct should
kick in at the moment of awareness that a child exists. I certainly should not have to spell out the
proof that millions of American children have been denied the results of
natural protective nurturing – legally since Roe v. Wade. Anyone alive today, who willingly sanctions
abortion, is denying the unalienable right of equality for “life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness” to those precious aborted lives that are its
victims. Since there are obviously many
who deny this right to others, (which they, themselves enjoy) it concerns me
that they would ever think they could be protectors of this right for anyone or
any group of people. If we ARE all
equal, then we are equal all the time – not just when it is convenient.
That will be the extent of my present comments on
the subject of abortion.
The way that nature is supposed to work is that parenting
bears the first right and responsibility for the offspring’s safety. In a climate that wrests more and more of
this right and responsibility away from parents and places it in the hands of
state and social agencies, we find all too often that parents are more and more
willing to give up that responsibility and therefore lay the blame when things
go wrong anywhere but where it belongs.
Instinct be damned, it’s always somebody else’s fault when a kid goes wrong
or gets hurt. The natural truth is that
the first line of defense for a child’s safety is his or her parent. Society tries to have it both ways though
and the results are sometimes disastrous.
Okay, so we do not live in an ideal world. Some parents should have never been blessed
with the ability to reproduce, and others are forced to step in as guardians of
their children. Anyone doing that
should know that the mantle has been passed to them – and that includes
bureaucratic agencies.
Now that we know who it is that I hold personally
responsible for child safety, we can get to the most important component for
securing the best chance for each child to grow and mature in the safest cocoon
possible. If we look again to nature,
to the animal world specifically, we find that from the beginning most animals
are trained by their parents to be self-reliant as quickly as possible for
their various species. Self-reliance is
also the most important lesson that a human will ever learn. For some reason we find that many parents
and guardians delay or completely withhold these lessons until children are far
older than they should be before introduction to lessons of self-reliance.
Children are much safer with these lessons begun
as early as possible – and that is almost immediately. These are not lessons taught at the
convenience of parents and guardians, but rather lesson taught at the
convenience of children. I don’t know
how we ever managed to get that switched around, but we did.
Learning self-reliance requires an introduction
to the role trust plays in human safety.
Children must learn to trust and be trusted before they will ever learn
to trust themselves. Learning to trust
begins immediately. This subject is
very well covered in my book, from infancy through young adulthood. We send messages to children long before we
think they are capable of understanding them, but their perceptions are very
acute when it comes to learning what they can expect from us. If a child is ever confused about whom he
can trust he will be more vulnerable to danger of any kind. Just as important to his safety is his
ability to know how much he can trust himself to accurately define and avoid or
handle danger.
The hardest thing for parents or guardians to
accept is that the only person who can be with a child, and thus offer the best
protection every second of every day is the child himself.
So, how do you raise a self-reliant child, and
when should your ideas about his safety overrule those foisted upon us by a
sometimes overzealous society? We must
be able to tap into two things to get the job done right. We must employ the natural nurturing
instinct of parents and the natural instinct of all humans to protect
themselves. An individual’s instinct is
as identifying as a DNA profile - the first component of which will identify
the “human” quality.
Trust is taught through modeling and observation
– not through cute little stories describing it. Hypocrisy cannot be hidden in lessons not modeled or
observed. A parent who tries to teach a
child not to lie by the telling of the “cry wolf” story, but models behavior
that does not support his words will not succeed in conveying trust. Likewise a parent who tells a child “nothing
in my life is more important than you” and then proceeds to put personal
desires or career responsibilities ahead of the child’s needs repeatedly may
lose the child’s respect and trust.
Parents must realize, “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” and make sure that
the seeds of trust are planted with vigilance and honesty.
If the first line of defense is self-reliance
built with trust, the second is surely physical, emotional, and spiritual
strength to withstand disappointment and adversity in all forms. What we find all too often is that society
expects children to be weak in these areas until they reach the magic age of
adulthood. The character of a child is
as strong in childhood as it will ever be in adulthood. There is no magic moment when a child’s
character is suddenly mature. Granted
there are physical aspects dealing with brain development that reach maturity
(usually not until the person is in his mid twenties) but these need not affect
character negatively or positively. By
the time a child is five to ten years old, he has been exposed to the necessary
components of character building, and the foundation is firmly set. Changing character afterwards takes a
significant emotional event and a lot of work.
Protecting children is not accomplished through
mandated blinders to the world around them.
Evil exists in the world and children should learn early on to recognize
its face. The fact that many adults
refuse to look at evil and define it accurately proves that children are not
learning the lessons of good and evil adequately. Children must be allowed to decide for themselves whether they
will be activists or pacifists in their own safety. If they wish to defend themselves against danger and
intimidation, it is a good thing, and the parameters for such active defense
should be realistically reviewed by both parent and child.
A pacifistic approach to securing a child’s
safety would require that someone else be assigned the role of champion for the
child’s safety. That role naturally
belongs to parents, but if they are substituted with someone or something else,
ultimate influence follows this substitution.
So the final question must be, do we want our children dependent on
outside influences for their safety, (which could include dependency on
government and society), or do we want to raise self assured, competent
adults?
Society and government have already interfered in
the parent-child relationship to the extent that certain tools of discipline
are all but off limits to parents, hence children are far less disciplined than
ever before. One only needs to observe
the public behavior of children nowadays to know that this is so. Discipline in schools has deteriorated to a
ridiculous extent. I certainly can’t
blame the parent who tells the school NOT to administer a swift discipline to a
misbehaving child, since parents themselves have been restricted in their use
of certain measures of discipline.
However, the only alternative has been to “diagnose” a misbehaving child
with a psychologically treatable disorder, and to assume that all parents will
be abusive without government restraints.
Is this what we really want?
Real child safety does not equate to
circumventing parental authority and expecting anything but negative results
from doing so. It also does not result
from teaching children that they are not to defend themselves against bullying
behavior from their peers and expecting them to know how to handle evil,
intimidating adults as they grow older.
It does not follow that a child raised in an atmosphere of his own
mistrust will be able to make sound decisions for his safety in other normal
activities of life. Children must learn
lessons of personal safety early on in order to achieve for themselves a more
secure future. Government and society
will not always “have their backs” as they venture out into the real
world.
If you have comments on this article, email me and
I will be glad to post them here and respond.