NURTURING CHILDREN IN RIGHTEOUSNESS

by: Norberto Betita

One of the greatest challenges of parenting is of raising and rearing children into the paths of righteousness. From infancy to adolescence teaching the proper morals and righteous principles is the principal responsibility of parents. It is expected that this learning and nurturing is done in the sacred confines of the home.  The mother is to be the first teacher assisted by the father and patriarch. It is however unfortunate that the families of today are constantly deprived of parental presence with both parents seeking and entering into professional careers. This system of family life is most common to all and it even magnified the fears of dear children going into the forbidden paths.

Today’s children are stormed by ever increasing enticements to ride on the surging tide of immorality. The sinking ship of morality is causing many of these tender souls to be easily attracted and become victims to the alluring invitations to vices that destroy dignity and demean decency.  They make a mock at chastity. They seek the thrills of drug addiction, of drunkenness, of computer gaming and of internet pornography above the quest for a productive and joyful future. They discredit honesty and virtue. They despise obedience to the commandments of God and instead join the spiralling trends of criminality. In the end they cultivate habits that demolish character and destroy worthy dreams.

How then can we ever protect our children from these unending assaults against the appropriate order of morality? How can we save them from the ever welcoming door of moral digression? Most of the waking hours of our children are spent outside the home---at school or other outdoor activities. On the average most parents only have about five hours share of children’s waking hours on week days. If both parents are working, that might even be reduced. If as parents we are not mindful, we might loss the intrinsic value of these few hours.  To some parents, week-ends are the best time for family affairs, but those two days might not be even enough for the nurturing and teaching. We must understand that during the five-day period children and youth are highly vulnerable to the pressures of peers and the temptations of vices and gaming.

O. Leslie Stone was quoted as saying, "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 really 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 own 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." ("Parenthood", General conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1976.)

I share with the fact that my family was also deprived of parental presence because both of us spouses are working even from the very moment of our marriage. Although we understood the paramount importance of the role of mother at home, we trailed a different course for reasons of penury. Like all other parents we are bound by a divine responsibility and so we squarely faced the challenge of raising five children into the path of righteousness and virtue.

My banking career required me to perform overtime works most of the time. My wife works with the government so she is available early for the children. We saw to it that our home-times are given fundamental worth. When our children were still very young and not yet at school, my wife makes sure that her office breaks are utilized to visit our children at home. We did not want to leave altogether the care of our children to a hired helper. When they were at school, we make sure that we are there to pick them up at the very moment when they are released from school. We are ready at any time when called to help on their school assignments. When extended hours are needed at school we exempt them from their assigned household chores. We gave them freedom to be with their peers but with strict time limitations. We impose punishment for disobedience but did it in the spirit of love and affection.

We diligently taught them correct principles by precept and example and allowed them to feel the joy of doing things rightly. We have four girls and a son. Not one of them had ever tasted cigarette and wine because we parents both live without those substances. When my only son was in later years in high school, his friends generally smoke and drink, but he never did. He never submitted to the pressures of his peers, rather he influenced them for good.

On Mondays we do family home evening where the family members are taught correct principles, enjoy simple family games, present individual talents, sing hymns and express prayers of gratitude. Each night we read the scriptures and discuss the principles learned followed by a family prayer. When we are faced with problems we sit together as a family in council to discuss proposed solutions. We allow them to participate in serious family matters. We make sure that our children attend church from the very first Sunday immediately following their birth and every Sunday thereafter.

We followed the counsel of A. Theodore Tuttle when he said, "Parental responsibility cannot go unheeded, nor can it be shifted to day-care centers, nor to the schoolroom, nor even to the church. Family responsibility comes by divine decree. Parents may violate this decree only at the peril of their eternal salvation." (Altar, Tent, Well," Ensign, Jan. 1973, p. 67.)

All of our children had finished college. Four of them are now married and have families of their own. They are now facing the challenge of raising and nurturing their own children in righteousness. We are indeed grateful that up to the present, they are still all accounted for along the path of moral safety. The years of our parenting are long gone with all children already beyond our accountability. But still we enjoyed their presence in righteous family activities that build character.

In the words of Daniel Webster I found a profound truth.

"If we work upon marble, it will perish. If we work upon brass, time will efface it. If we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work upon men's immortal minds, if we imbue them with high principles, with the just fear of God and love of their fellow men, we engrave on those tablets something which...will brighten and brighten to all eternity." (Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations, New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1934, p. 1312, as quoted by O. Leslie Stone.)

Each of us had our own way of nurturing our children into the path of righteousness and virtue. Whatever pattern we follow it is of paramount importance that we do it out of love and concern for the welfare of our dearly beloved children. So we are told, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6).