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Lynette's father was a little Hitler, a tyrant, according to her childhood friends. She was not allowed to eat with other children in the dining room but was banished without reason to the kitchen. She got the silent treatment often from her father. He disliked her intensely. "Her father's treatment scarred her badly," an old friend said. {"Her mother was too scared to open her mouth."

When Lynette was 16 she was kicked out of the family home. Charles Manson found her crying in the street and offered to look after her.

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme attempted to assassinate President Ford and can now look forward to a life sentence. . . . . . .

Joe's father was a drunken brute who beat his wife and child savagely and often. The boy took refuge in fantasy and in his teens discovered a fictional hero called Koba.

Koba was the main character in a popular Georgian advanture story about a young peasant who fought alone and with incredible success to free the oppressed.

Joe always wanted to be the best, the bravest, the unbeatable comrade who was always right and never wrong ... and if anyone doubted this was so, he had better beware. Koba's revenge would be swift and terrible.

Who was Joe? You've guessed - Joseph Stalin, who with Adolf Hitler shares that doubtful honour of killing more people in the 20th Century than any other individual. . . . . . .

Parenting is very important, and if we have children a successful parent is something we desperately want to be.

But the stronger our desire, the greater may be our confusion. Should we be strict or lenient, demanding or accepting? Should we try harder or not so hard, punish or just talk, restrict or liberate our children? Should we listen to the experts or do what comes naturally?

So parents tend to quake and vacillate. As one mother said recently, "I'm strict until I can't stand myself. Then lenient until I can't stand my kids".

In 1975 Dr. Spock blamed child psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, social workers and "paediatricians like myself" for persuading parents that the experts know best - with result that many parents now regard themselves as ignorant and incompetent. It makes you humble to have been a kid when everything was the kid's fault and a parent at a time when everything is the parent's fault!

Many parents have really tried hard, and still something can go wrong. We all know the story of the black sheep in the family, a boy or girl who "goes wrong" to the mortification of his parents as well as the other children in the family. We must not pass judgment on cases of that kind because each one is different. It is too easy to blame parents for everything that goes wrong in a family.

These days family life is changing. Families have lost unifying economic functions and have often shrunk to two adults with no aunts, uncles or grandparents to help guide the children. All the heat is on parents, but fathers typically work in distant offices, leaving mothers to raise sons with insufficient fatherly support.

How can I be a good parent? All the experts advise that the easiest way is to have good parents. But there are many notable exceptions. With some help from God we can "rewrite the script" of our lives. What we were in the past - even in our childhood - need not determine how we will cope in the future. We do not need to be the victims of our personal history! Christianity is all about turning to God for help and strength and victory, rather than blaming ourselves or our parents or the world or the environment we live in. None of us needs to be imprisoned within our past.

Here are eight sound pieces of advice which have proved helpful to thousands of parents over the years:

1. "Spend time not money" Did you ever hear the story of the Prodigal Father? Some years ago Dr. Joplin wrote it. It should be read by every dad today.

"A certain man had two sons, and the younger of them said to the father, 'Father, give me the portion of thy time, and thy attention, and thy companionship, and thy counsel and guidance which falleth to me.' And he divided unto them his living, in that he paid his boy's bills, and sent him to a select preparatory school, to dancing schools, and to college, and tried to believe he was doing his full duty by his son.

"And not many days after, the father gathered all his interests and aspirations and ambitions and took his journey into a far country, into a land of stocks and bonds and securities and other things which do not interest a boy, and there he wasted his precious opportunity of being a chum to his son. And when he had spent the very best of his life, and had gained money, but had failed to find any satisfaction, there arose a mighty famine in his heart and he began to be in want of sympathy and real companionship.

"And he went and joined himself to one of the clubs of that country and they elected him chairman of the house committee, and president of the club and sent him to the legislature. And he fain would have satisfied himself with the husks that other men did eat, and no man gave him any real friendship.

"And when he came to himself, he said: "How many men of my acquaintance have boys whom they understand and who understand them, who talk about their boys and associate with their boys and seem perfectly happy in the comradeship of their sons, and I perish here with heart hunger? I will arise and go to my son and will say unto him: 'Son, I have sinned against heaven in in thy sight, and I am no more worthy to be called thy father. Make me as one of the thine acquaintances.' And he arose and came to his son.

"But while he was yet a great way off, his son saw him and was moved with astonishment, he drew back and was ill at ease. And the father said unto him, 'Son, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight. I have not been a father to you, and I am no more worthy to be called thy father. Forgive me now, and let me be your chum.

"But the son said, 'Not so, for it is too late. There was a time when I wanted your companionship and advice and counsel, but you were too busy. I got the companionship, the wrong kind - and now, I am wrecked in soul and body. It is too late - too late - too late!'"

Studies show that father absence has baneful effects (especially on boys), ranging from low self-esteem to hunger for immediate gratification and susceptibility to group influence.

I wonder why Timothy was not as strong, either physically or emotionally as he could have been? The Bible suggests that his mother and grandmother were formative influences in his life rather than his father. That's a pity.

"All work and no play on the part of parents often leads to all play and no work on the part of the children." This can include Christian work, too. Remember Eli's two sons? And Absalom?

Many parents have no idea what their children really think because they never give them a chance to explain. "Can't you see I'm busy?" is a put-down that ought to be banned from the parental lexicon.

One of the songs the Beatles sins says: "She's leaving home After living alone For so many years ..."

Woven into the poignant balled of a runaway daughter is her parents' haunting lament: "We gave her everything money could buy". But they didn't realise money can't buy love.

By the way, I heard that after buying a house for the aunt who brought him up, Beatle John Lennon presented her with a plaque which now hangs in her living-room. Engraved on it is the phrase she directed his way almost every day of his adolescent life: "The guitar's all right, but you'll never earn your living with it." (It may be a good idea for parents not to be too judgmental about their kids' hobbies!)

2. Do meaningful things together It's not enough simply to spend time with your kids: make sure this time is spent qualitatively. Play family games together, go for hikes, build something. Turn off the TV and have every evening meal around the table, and prepare topics for family conversation. Just because evening meals get tense is no reason to quit them; there is no better ritual for spotting and curing the tensions. One family had no fear of the kids' trying drugs; everyone does volunteer work together at the narcotics-control centre.

If a family really battles for what one psychologist has called "superordinate goals" - the kind of unifying struggle for existence that once cemented families of pioneers - these help parents and children to pull together. Have you ever wondered why farmers' kids are so loyal to their families' goals?

3. Listen The fifteen-year old anonymous author of "Go Ask Alice", who before she had lived her sixteenth year became of or America's 50,000 drug deaths, wrote that her parents "talked and talked and talked, and never once did they ever hear one thing I was trying to say to them ... if only they would let me talk instead of for ever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking. But they won't listen and we kids keep winding back up in the same old, frustrating, lost lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically."

A few years ago Time Magazine had quite a brilliant essay "On Being an American Parent". In the following issue a college student from Ohio write: "I'm 18 years old, drink whenever I get the chance, have smoked pot, and as a result of a very eventful Thanksgiving vacation, am no longer a virgin. Why? Was it my parents or just me? I'm so confused - but who can I talk to? Not my parents.

My parents could read this and never dream it was their daughter. My friends must have corrupted me (my mother never liked my friends ... I was always "better" than they).

I have only one important plea to parents ... Listen, listen and listen again. Please, I know the consequences and I'm in Hell."

Relationships between parents and their children are certainly fragile and require the most expert care. Parents ought constantly to work to improve their understanding and skills in human relations. They will remember that the opposite to love is not hate but indifference. So they will try to give their children individual, focused attention. They will learn the art of listening - really hearing the feelings that are often hiding among the words.

4. Be a good example "There is no sure way to guarantee that your child will grow up to be the kind of person; you would like him to be. The most likely way is for you to be the kind of person you would like him to be." The parents' own relationship is the most important gift they can give their children. The child's task is self-definition; unless he can distinguish himself from his culture, though on the culture's terms, a boy never quite becomes a man. Growing up is a dialectical process that requires things that one can push against in order to become stronger. A child matures be testing himself against the limits set by loving adults. Study after study shows that two things are vital to a child's later independence. First, warmly firm parents who admire each other and on whom he can model himself while breaking away. Second, opportunities to prove his competence in work and love.

Discipline comes from being a disciple; both words come from the Latin word for pupil. Children become disciples of parents who enjoy and back up one another; whose mutual respect and ungrudging praise for work well done makes children draw a positive picture of themselves. But the approach must be genuine; the young mind is quick to spot the phony. The T.A. people call this "stroking" Just as a cat or dog reacts positively to affectionate stroking, so a growing human being learns to accept himself when he is affirmed. If a child does not receive enough positive strokes, he will look for negative strokes - any kind of attention is better than none.

And, by the way, children aren't fools: they'll detect what interests and hobbies have priority in their parents' lives. They'll sense whether devotion to God is of greater or lesser importance than devotion to golf!

Children learn more from their parents, than from anybody else. If a child lives with criticism he learns to condemn... If a child lives with hostility he learns to fight... If a child lives with ridicule he learns to be shy... If a child lives with shame he learns to feel guilty... If a child lives with tolerance he learns to be patient... If a child lives with encouragement he learns confidence... If a child lives with praise he learns to appreciate... If a child lives with fairness he learns justice... If a child lives with security he learns to have faith... If a child lives with approval he learns to like himself... If a child lives with acceptance and friendship he learns to find love in the world.

Above all, children need to be taught that just as God did not keep the joy of aliveness to himself but passed it on to others, so must we if we are to fulfil his image. To receive the gift of life and then do nothing with it beyond ourselves denies its very genius.

In Albert Schweitzer's autobiography he explains his momentous decision to terminate his career as a scholar and a musician in Germany and go to Lambarene as a physician to African natives. He says quite simply that he had been given so much by so many that he felt obligated to give something back to humanity. He did not regard this as a sacrifice being painfully extracted from him. He saw it rather as the natural reciprocity of life - to whom much is given, much ought to be expected. This is how God finds His joy - in giving Himself beyond Himself, and so must we. Langdon Gilkey has gone so far as to define morality in quantitative terms. He has developed this formula: the more people one takes into account as one decides what to do, the more moral the act. Thus the spectrum would start with the individual who thinks only of himself and his welfare, which is down-right immoral, all the way over to the other extreme to the God who so loved the world - that is, who took everyone into account - that He have His only begotten Son.

And Jesus Himself was known as "the Man for others". So parents ought, by their example, to give children the impression that they are ready to make sacrifices to help other people. And the more people considered, the more moral the act, and the more likely that children will learn to be truly unselfish.

5. Understanding your kids' growing pains A couple of years ago Dr. Spock wrote an article about some of the problems of adolescence. Some excerpts: Adolescent boys may express their anxious competitiveness by steering very clear of their father's occupation, though some of them swing around to it later when they have matured enough to overcome their irrational fears.

Psychoanalysis has also revealed that many boys who feel overawed by their father suppress their resentment and antagonism towards him and displace it on to their mother, flaring up at her over quite reasonable requests or imagined slights.

A youth finds himself through finding something similar in his friends and peer group. He mentions that he loves a certain song or hates a certain teacher or craves to own a certain article of apparel. His friend exclaims with amazement that he has always had the very same attitude. Both are delighted and reassured. Each has lost a degree of his feeling of aloneness, of peculiarity, and gained a pleasurable sense of belonging.

Two girls talk fast all the way home from school, talk for another half-hour in front of the house of one, and finally separate. But as soon as the second reaches her home she telephones and their resume the mutual confidences. A majority of adolescents help to overcome their feelings of aloneness by a sometimes slavish conformity to the styles of heir class-mates - in clothes, reading matter, songs, entertainers. These styles have to be different from those of their parents' generation. And if their own styles irritate or shock their parents, so much the better.

A majority of adolescents become ashamed of their parents for a few years, particularly when their friends are present. This is partly related to their own identity.

The sensitive parent will be aware of these "growing pains" and will not be foolish enough to react too strongly when their kids begin to untie their parents' apron strings.

6. Don't be over-protective The best parents are consciously and perhaps unconsciously training their children to realise that some things in life are hard, unpleasant, and even arbitrary.

Paul Tournier has pointed out that an overly protected child goes into the world without defenses. Nature has a way of building up immunities through interaction with that which threatens life. This means that if a parent never allows a child to experience the hardships of life, they prevent the natural protective mechanisms from developing. A hot-house plant has little chance of surviving in normal surroundings, and so does a child that has been overly protected.

Kids can cope with frustrations, so long as there is meaning in these frustrations. Don't over-protect your children against hurtful situations. In London, a doctor told a convention of British psychiatrists that too much mother love could make children hate their parents. Of thirteen men who had killed their mothers, eleven had said that they had been dominated and over-protected.

7. Discipline

Discipline your children lovingly. Parents' discipline should be based on four F's: firmness, fondness, frankness and fairness.

The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). Now some parents carry discipline too far, continually harassing their children. The Bible also says, "Provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged" (Colossians 3:21). In fact in both the Ephesians (6:1-4) and the Colossians (3:20-21) commands about "Children obey your parents" are followed by "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger". So commandment no. 5-1/2 is: Parents love your children". "No" should be said as lovingly as "yes". Deal with the situation, not the person. Don't attack a child for being clumsy, rather gently reprimand the clumsiness.

Further, most discipline problems consist of two parts: angry feelings and angry acts. Each part has to be handled differently. Feelings have to be identified and expressed; acts may have to be limited and redirected. How and when to set limits depends partly on the child's age. Nothing makes a small child more anxious than being asked if he "wants" to do this or that and then being given reasons as to why he should. Dr. Spock, sometimes accused of permissiveness, firmly advises, "Just do what's necessary". In short: time for bed, lights out, no chatter.

Limits certainly require reasons, but once clearly stated, they should be enforced without exception. Letting a child get away with something that he knows is wrong or dangerous makes him feel that his parents don't love him - and rightly so. Old-fashioned as it may seem, children still need discipline, guidelines and certainly the supra-self imperatives of religion.

Basic to parent-child communication is the art of helping children (or even adults) to express and thus handle their deep feelings. It seldom pays to condemn or reason with an angry child; strong feelings vanish not by fiat but rather by the clarification that occurs in a child's mind when a parent "mirrors" or states his problems for him. To spank a tot who says, "I hate you", is to store up his anger and augment future misbehaviour. A skilful mother listens, says, "I know just how you feel", and the child's feeling that someone understands shrinks the anger to a size that he himself can subdue. Reassurance rather than reprimand is often the best medicine for defeat or failure.

The Police Department of Houston, Texas, has issued these ten easy rules for raising a delinquent:

1. Begin at infancy to give the child everything he wants. In this way he will grow up to believe the world owes him a living. 2. When he picks up bad words, laugh at him. This will make him think he's cute. 3. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he is 21 and then let him "decided for himself". 4. Pick up everything he leaves lying round - books, shoes, clothes. Do everything for him so that he will be experienced in throwing all responsibility on others. 5. Quarrel frequently in his presence. In this way he will not be too shocked when the home is broken later. 6. Give a child all the spending money he wants. Never let him earn his own. Why should he have things as tough as you had them? 7. Satisfy his every craving for food, drink and comfort. Denial may lead to harmful frustrations. 8. Take his part against neighbours, teachers, policemen. They are all prejudiced against your child. 9. When he gets into real trouble, apologise for yourself by saying, "I never could do anything with him". 10. Prepare for a life of grief. You are bound to have it.

8. Read the Bible and pray with your children Teach your children to know God and bring them up in the Church. Parents will build a secure foundation for their children if the Bible is read regularly in the home, grace is said at the table and family prayers take place regularly.

When do you start doing this? Before your baby is born!

Billy Sunday the famous evangelist used to say "If you want to lick the devil, hit him over the head with a cradle!"

Conclusion

Everytime I encounter a strong, vibrant human being, I always remind myself that that individual did not come to such strength all by himself or herself. At the back of every healthy personality lies one of the oldest and most significant of all human arts, namely, the art of parenting. Here is human creativity at its highest.

But these days the task of parenting ought to include far more people than just two biological mates. It is becoming painfully obvious in our day that the isolated nuclear family cannot bear the full load of parenting. In fact one of the finest missions a church like ours could assume would be that of "compensatory parenting" where the natural family structure has broken down for one reason or another. Back in the days when people lived in clan-like groupings, if a child's parents became incapacitated in some way, other family members stepped in to fill the vacuum. The same needs exist today, only we no longer live in clans, so some other mechanism needs to function here. The Church could be an expanding family which monitors what is happening to whom and then steps in to help a child grow into those two most important realities - who they are and why they are.

Finally, to really succeed as a parent one needs above all a happy heart - free of worry and care. This allows one to carry the heavy responsibilities of raising children with joy and confidence. That's why parents need above all a good trusting relationship with their Heavenly Father.