Guidelines For Living

Guest (Male): Take a break from your busy schedule and join Harold Sala for Guidelines for Living.

Harold Sala: While there are many ways to fail as a parent, there are also some surefire 100 percent ways guaranteed to help you succeed. No, they're not copyrighted, but I have certainly tested them. They work, provided you put them into practice. I call them guidelines for successful parenting.

Guideline number one: never forget consistency counts. Today there's a lot of talk about values and how parents have in some way failed. Parents tell me about teenagers who scoff at their ideas as being out of touch. Their actions say, "Don't do as I do, do as I say." They have forgotten that values are caught, not taught. Your life is the message, so model it well.

Guideline number two: don't fight and die on every hill. Wise is the parent who can sift the trivial from the important, who keeps the main thing the main thing, and cuts enough slack for a youngster to know what is important and what isn't. Overkill produces anger and rebellion. Too much discipline can be as harmful in the long term as too little or none at all. Decide what is non-negotiable and what is simply a matter of a difference of opinion and stick with it.

Guideline number three: be the parent. Don't worry about being your child's best friend or always being liked. Of course, a four-year-old won't like you when you insist on his cleaning up the toys, or his plate for that matter. What counts is his knowing that he is loved, whether or not you're always the most important wonderful person in his life.

Guideline number four: take time to enjoy the experience, the trip. When a dad was invited to take a position at corporate headquarters, he turned them down, choosing to accept a smaller salary. Why? He knew that with the move into management, he would be spending more and more hours fighting traffic and he wouldn't be there to see his son play high school football.

Parenting is like a kid with a fistful of money at a candy store. Once it's spent, there's no second time around. Scores of parents climb the corporate ladder only to find that the ladder has been leaning against an empty house. They've lost their kids in the process.

Guideline number five: stay connected. Get into your kid's head, not his dresser drawers or locker. You don't have to snoop when you are there to listen, to reflect, to ask questions. Wise is the parent who accepts the reality that kids don't communicate on the same schedule as adults, but they will open their hearts provided you have opened your ears and will listen without censuring them, striving to help them understand why you feel as you do.

Guideline number six: disciple, don't direct. Far too many parents are concerned about behavior without helping kids formulate a belief system with strong convictions and reasons for believing what we believe. Growing a kid God's way requires you walk together spiritually.

Guideline number seven: remember this too shall pass. Soon enough you will understand that the teen years are merely a transition from childhood to adulthood, and you will discover that grandchildren are the reward God gives you for not killing your kids when they're teenagers.

Number eight: teach your children that with every choice come consequences. This means you help them understand that the cause and effect relationship of what we do can't be canceled by tears or remorse. Number nine: help them to see beyond the moment. Too often we sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the temporary.

Number 10: pray more, preach less. At a point in the journey, you can preach until you have calluses on your vocal cords and wind erosion on your teeth, and it will do far less than your putting a fence of prayer around your youngster. Believe me, it works when everything else fails.

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