After church Sunday afternoon, my Grandmother’s pastor stopped and asked how often I was in town. I shrugged and said it depends; why? He then went on to tell me about the youth violence problem in Enterprise, Alabama and wanting to do something about it. We stood talking for awhile exchanging stories about the youth in our respective communities and agreed on one common theme ~ the lack of true understanding of consequences and actions. The more we talked though, the more something that has been wearing on me lately seemed to get heavier and heavier. The truth of the matter is that we really don’t have a “youth problem.” We have a “grown folk problem.”
My psychology professor from Spelman College told us that he would not treat children without treating the parents. Why? Because parents had a strong impact on the outcome of treatment of children and the only way to truly fix the problem was to fix it totally. This statement over 15 years ago and the continued behavior of your children has really got me thinking. Just maybe the only way to fix the problem of our youth is to start with the grown folks.
First, parenting and friendship with children do not go hand in hand. As parents it is not your responsibility to be your child’s friend. It is your responsibility to RAISE (that is a verb that requires action on your part) your children. That means setting and adhering to boundaries. Making sure your children at are school. Making sure they are doing their homework timely. Making sure that sports are not taking the place of doing their homework. Monitoring their social media sites should somewhere on the list of things to do daily. Following up and dropping in on where they say they are going to be to make sure they are their. My daddy called it “keeping you honest.” Parenting requires limits, including curfew.
Proverbs 22:6 says “train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Another verb ~ TRAIN. Both train and raise, require parents to do something. As parents you don’t get to do nothing and let the world, the television, the street, and whomever else do your responsibility. Well I guess you could, but you get what we are getting. As parents you made a decision, or at least you should have made a decision at some point along the way, to bring a child into the world. Once you made that decision you then have to follow through with the action that goes along with it; the training and raising of your child.
Training and raising your children means you’re your needs and wants have to take a back seat to the needs and wants of your children. It means that you may not be able to get your hair and nails done every week or even every other week. It means that you may not be able to get the Jordan’s on the Thursday they come out. Training and raising your children means that you cannot spend every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in the club. Quite frankly the club going should be a minimum. It means that your evenings may be spent not only assisting your child in doing homework, but spending hours trying to figure out how to do homework. It means that you are responsible for ensuring that your child attends school each and every day. That even means that there are times that you will have to check in and drop in to make sure they are there. Training and raising means that your number one priority and responsibility should be the betterment of your children.
Parents aren’t the only grown folks responsible though. Anyone ever heard of “it takes a village to raise a child.” When our communities were villages the children were doing much better. Now, grown folks see children doing things they shouldn’t and what do they do? Do they correct the child? Nope. They criticize and talk about the child/children to everyone who will listen except for the people that matter. I hear it all the time. “Those aren’t my kids,” or “you better not say anything to somebody’s elses children; they will get you.” Whatever happened to doing the right thing because it was the right thing? The truth of the matter is, when you don’t correct children that you see misbehaving they become risk to us all.
Given the fact that it is theoretically and adult that is raising or not raising the youth of today, it appears to be a no brainer that in order to have an impact on the youth it is necessary to have an impact on the grown folks ~ ALL of the grown folks. So just maybe, we need to go directly to the root of the problem ~grown folks. Seems kind of elementary doesn’t it?
