On Influencing Our Children

When we are dealing with inanimate objects, there may come a precise moment when we can stand back and look at our work and call it finished. But with our children the problem is not so simple. We may put them to bed at night and sigh something of relief, and feel a certain satisfaction and security in their hours of sleep. But with morning, the process which parents know so well begins all over again. Sometimes in our puzzled discouragement or weariness, we might wish that we could transfix our children for the moment, that we could feel that the clay had set in its mold, that we could somehow render them immovable as we think they ought to beat least long enough for us to get our breath. We may be given to wishing that we could somehow seal them away from all conflicting thought, away formal contrary and contaminating influences. But our children aren’t going to live in a vacuum: they never have, and they never will. If they are normal, they are going to move much each day and see man things and think many thoughts and react in many ways. And through all of this intense growing and moving and changing, if we are wise and constant, we can do much to help them, to protect them, to guide them in all that they see and hear and think and do. But no matter how able and earnest we are, no matter how long we may live, no matter how close we may have been to our children, we cannot isolate them from the influences of their own time and generation. And inevitably there will be times when we will not be with them: when other voices will be in their ears, when other hands will be on their shoulders, when their decisions will be made without our presence or help. And since we cannot isolate them from life, since we cannot fix their thoughts, or cast them into an unchanging mold or anticipate all their problems, we would do well to give them, early, while ours is still the strongest influence in their lives, a sure set of standards, a foundation of safe and sound principles, on which to base their actions and their decisions when we are no longer by their sides to counsel with them. Among the greatest gifts a parent can give a childeven greater than hovering, solicitous protectionare the wisdom, the character, the standards that will help him safely to make his won decisions and provide his own protection.