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.
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.