“I’m voting for Nixon.” Never underestimate the importance of good parenting.

This is not a political article, in fact, it is based upon our priest’s homily on Sunday!  Our priest is a very good speaker, and I particularly enjoy when he incorporates the impact his parents had on him as he was growing up.  There is nothing that can replace parental guidance in the formation of children, and we should never rely on others to influence our kid’s future adulthood.

My parents moved around, a lot.  In fact, we moved so often that I counted 12 schools in 4 different states by the time I graduated.  That could make or break a kid – always being “new.”  My parents, however, were my constant in the midst of change and their Christian convictions moved with us wherever we went.  Some things never changed, and that helped me to become a strong individual in my own right.

I recall in the fall of 1968 we were living in Detroit (Dad was in seminary) and it was election time.  Time for a new President of the United States at a time when the “United” was under fire.  Of course, at the age of 6 I had no clue about politics or what Viet Nam was, but I knew that my parents were going to vote for a man called “Nixon.”  One day at school, as I sat next to a brick wall warming myself in the autumn sun, during recess three little girls holding hands came skipping up to me chanting, “Humphrey, Humphrey.”  They stopped and asked me who I was voting for and I replied, “I am voting for Nixon.”  And off they went, chanting around the playground.

My parents were, and in many ways still are, the greatest human influencers in my life.  Not everyone is able to have stable, loving, and Christian parents; but I did, and that made all the difference.  My parents truly believed that if you “Train up a child in the way they should go, and when they are old, they will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22:6).   It is a promise God kept.  Yes, I did go my own way in my 20’s but by my 40’s I came back full circle; even converting to Roman Catholicism from Fundamentalist Baptist!  Now in my 60’s I think back on my upbringing and thank God every day for the loving and strong parents that I was blessed to have.  To this day I often look to heaven and ask them what they think I should do about such-and-such; and there are a plethora of familiar sayings that come to my mind.  All thanks to a Mom and Dad who played an active role in my maturing.

Aristotle said, “Give me a child until the age of 7 and I will show you the man.”  Maybe that was true, or not, but we do know that children are highly impressionable during those years. (This reminds me of the old TV ad that showed a man light up a cigarette, and his young son mimic him).  Make no mistake, neither school, nor the Church, nor peers will have a greater impact on the future of your children than you as a parent.

As for those in this society that exploit or otherwise abuse children, Jesus understood the damage it could cause when he said, of their oppressors, “It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.”