Influencing a child

I visited my nephews yesterday. They are the victims of a broken-home where my brother and his wife have for now failed at providing them the traditional two-parent home. The heart of the situation now is that these boys need an influence...some guiding force of character, dignity and courage to give their lives a direction that will lead them to success. Where does this influence come from...?

My nephews are living a life far removed from the worst of what we find to be all to common in the black community. When asked what's wrong in black america, people often point to external influences and historic issues of socio-economic injustice and racism. However after this visit with my nephews I think the crux of the problems any race faces is simply how do we relate to our children and build LASTING and INFLUENTIAL relationships?

The first truism in life is that what parents value(character values, music, social entertainment...) imprints itself upon parent's children through the child's passionate instinct to be like their parents. Children model their lives after what their parents value because that relationship which is forged through genetic replication and a helplessness in a dangerous world is what lays the groundwork for how children grow up. Parents often through a lack of true appreciation for their own accomplishments in life, point to entertainers, wealthy sports stars, and other media driven people that exhibit the worst of humanity as “What they wish they could have been when they grew up.”

Children hear the furious acclaim and worship heaped up on these images and in turn hear the angst in the voices of their parents about living a “normal” life with 2.5 kids, a wife and a middle-class job. This destructive humility, the desecration of a parent's own image when the child is begging and searching for a role-model to pattern their life after...is setting that child up for failure.

What is the answer?

1. Be there! Children can't model what they don't know. Absentee “fathers” undermine the heart of what a child needs...attention, love and a physical tactile relationship.

2. Parents should love themselves. Its a sad thing when a parent can only market themselves to their children a counter-example of what to be. Parents should take pride in the love that they provide their children. Being responsible, being committed and being determined to see your children succeed is a much more venerable set of accomplishments and values than being able to run fast, dunk a basketball, take pictures of a living or have sex with every girl in the world....

3. Forge a lasting relationship with your child. Without being there, without contextualizing their fledgling view of the world, what is a child to do?