parenthood

Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth.

We adults forget what we do to children's imaginations when we go through one of our national seizures on an issue. A dozen years ago, Hollywood fell in love with the environmental issue and put enviro messages in all their shows. The messages made their way into the funnies and magazines, and parents went to school officials and said, "We'd like our children to be better educated on environmental concerns." The schools came through with a vengeance. Now I have a little son who thinks he's going to die from pollution. We do not educate our children; we traumatize them. We are not giving them a vision of a better world; we are giving them nightmares.

They [gorillas] are brave and loyal. They help each other. They rival elephants as parents and whales for gentleness. They play and have humor and they harm nothing. They are what we should be. I don't know if we'll ever get there.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever, do they forgive them.

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.

Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.

Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.

Today our youth are faced with tremendous challenges-and what do they need most? They need sound knowledge, sensible understanding, a guiding hand. They need real homes that are maintained in a clean and orderly manner. They need fathers who are really fathers and mothers who are mothers in the true sense of the word. They need more than mere progenitors or landlords. They are in need of loving, understanding parents, who give fatherly and motherly care, who put their families first in their lives, and who consider it their fundamental and most important duty to save their children, to so orient them and their thinking that they will not be swayed by every wind of persuasion which happens to blow in their direction.

There was always plenty to do in the garden, weeds to be yanked up between the flower beds, holes to be dug for tulip bulbs. Williams blended rich compost into the soil, turning it over; or prepared to plant the sapling bought back from a weekend trip to James Laughlin's country place in Norfork, Connecticut, or Flossie's parent's farm near Harriman, New York. Rooting around in the dark earth was great exercise. Williams carefully removed his white shirt and tie, and when he had worked long enough so that sweat began to show through his undershirt, it never failed, his mind was wonderfully cleared. He washed up, had a bite to eat, and was ready for the next visitor.

Some mistakenly misread the mercy and graciousness of God. For instance, some partial believers are always scolding God, or disregarding Him, because of the observable and lamentable consequences of our misuse of God's gift to us of moral agency. It is as if a teenage son, given his first car, promptly had an accident with resulting pain, suffering, and expense, and the errant son then railed at his father for permitting the suffering resulting from the son's misuse of the gift of the automobile. Granted, in defense of the analogy, mortal parents ought not to give youngsters automobiles too soon, and then only when they have provided wise counsel, driver training, and so on. But there still comes a time when, if they are ever to drive alone, trained teenagers must be left alone at the wheel. The principle is the same with us in the second estate.