Occasions for Confidence

As concerning young people, parents are sometimes heard to say: “I don’t know what more I can do. I have given them everything anyone could ask.” (But sometimes it seems that we are willing to give everything ⎯ except ourselves!)

How many fathers, for example, are willing to buy costly sports equipment ⎯ but don’t take time to use it with their boys? How many parents are willing to buy their children the “best education” ⎯ but don’t take time to teach them some of the precious things that aren’t found in the catalogue or the curriculum? How many parents are willing to send their children to the country, to camp, or almost anywhere ⎯ but feel a little too much relieved when they are out of the way? (How many of us hope that they will get elsewhere what it is our duty and privilege to give them at our own knees?)

There are many agencies and organizations to take over their time ⎯ but it isn’t only a question of keeping them otherwise occupied. There are some things that come only by intimate association, only by earnest understanding. And when a youngster needs to talk out a personal problem, there isn’t any substitute for sitting down and giving the time it takes to talk it out. And if we pass up the hour or evening when his heart is open for close confidences or when his arms are open for affection, who knows how much it might have meant!

These occasions of confidence, these times of teaching from the heart, these precious hours and evenings are perishable and priceless. And yet how many of us are doing almost everything else ⎯ and permitting them to pass? How many of us are taking time to talk to their hearts, to feed their souls with things that are beyond books, to make them feel that they can come to us with their most intimate confidences without fear of being brushed off or misunderstood.

There is more to being a good parent than providing physical necessities and arranging for formal instruction (important as these are). And beyond what we may be willing to buy them or where we may be willing to send them, we should ask ourselves if we are willing to sit down, and listen long, and take time to say some of those things that sometimes so much need to be said, and to live some of those hours that so much need to be lived with those who have close claims upon our lives and our love.