How to raise a juvenile delinquent
by the Houston Police Department
1. Begin in 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. It will also encourage him to pick up cuter phrases that will blow off the top of your head later.
3. Never give him any spiritual training. Wait until he is 21, and then let him decide for himself.
4. Avoid the use of the word “wrong.” It may develop a guilt complex. This will condition him to believe later, when he is arrested for stealing a car, that society is against him and that he is being persecuted.
5. Pick up everything he leaves lying around — books, shoes, and clothing. Do everything for him so he will be experienced in throwing all responsibility onto others.
6. Let him read any printed matter he can get his hands on. Be careful that the silverware and drinking glasses are sterilized, but let his mind feast on garbage.
7. Quarrel with your spouse frequently in the presence of your children. In this way they will not be too shocked when the home breaks up later.
8. Give the child all the spending money he wants. Never let him earn his own. Why should he have things as tough as you had them?
9. Satisfy his every craving for food, drink and comfort. See that every sensual desire is gratified. Denial may lead to harmful frustration.
10. Take his part against neighbors, teachers, and policemen. They are all prejudiced against your child.
11. When he gets into real trouble, apologize for yourself by saying, “I never could do anything with him.”
12. Prepare for a life of grief. You will be apt to have it.
Although the list above certainly provides thoughtful and detailed guidelines on how to flunk at parenthood, I felt, somehow, that the conclusion was depressing, to say the least. Consequently, I wrote the following “Positive Response” — since it's not easy to be the parent of a juvenile delinquent, others might be encouraged to choose a method of parenting which, though equally arduous, is at least more positive and rewarding.
How to raise an Orthodox Christian,
and, possibly, a saint
(My positive response to the Houston Police Department).
1) When the child is yet young, begin to train him/her in sympathy and consideration for others and in unselfishness. By these means he/she will grow up to understand that the material things of this world are not the most important things for Orthodox Christians. Your life-style and example will be the greatest influence on your child in this matter.
2) Teach your child how to chant the psalms and the hymns of the Church. This will encourage him or her to learn to love the holy services, and to reject the foul language and immodest songs that are so widespread today in our society. Your example in this will have the greatest influence on your child.
3) Never cease from finding occasions to train your child in spiritual matters and in the love of God and others, and always bring them to the Church. When we were small, we were never asked “if” we were coming to church — or anywhere else, for that matter. The fact that we were going to church was a foregone conclusion. Your child must learn this from the very earliest years. If you wait until your child reaches adolescence, it will already be far too late.
4) Teach your child the meaning of the words “right” and “wrong,” “sin” and “virtue,” “truth” and “falsehood” ; also teach your child to know the Church's Faith, and to recognize erroneous belief. In this manner, your child’s understanding and spiritual discretion will grow as the years go by, and he/she will be prepared for the future, even if he/she has to endure hate and persecution for his/her convictions.
5) Give your child spiritual duties appropriate to his/her age and understanding. These could include such activities as reading the Lives of the Saints written for your child’s level, or reciting some of the evening prayers together with the rest of the family, or fasting and making prostrations, or helping out in church if he or she is old enough.
6) Aside from providing your child with plenty of Orthodox spiritual literature appropriate for his/her age, make sure that material of an impure or inappropriate nature is not in your home. Unfortunately, today this includes most of television programming. Remember: whatever goes in, comes out. Your example in this matter will have the greatest influence on your child.
7) Your own life-style, your personal tastes, your words, the books you read, the music you listen to, and the things that draw your interest and attention will all speak louder to your child than anything else. Hallow your child's eyes with the holy icons. Sanctify his hearing with the holy hymns, his sense of smell with sacred incense, and his entire body and soul with the holy Mysteries. If your home is a haven of spiritual sanity, love, and peace, your child will know where to turn when he or she inevitably encounters the blasphemous, shocking, and sordid things that fill our society. Teach your child the Jesus Prayer. In connection with this last matter, I remember the following story:
Some twenty years ago, on the Greek island of Oinoussae, which lies opposite the large Aegean island of Chios, there was a married priest who served the spiritual and liturgical needs of the sacred Convent of the Annunciation there. This clergyman had four or five children, and every morning he lined them up for a “review.” He interrogated them to learn if they had, upon arising from bed, made the sign of the cross, said their prayers, washed their faces, brushed their teeth, scrubbed behind their ears, and dressed nicely and appropriately. Then he would wave his prayer rope in front of them and ask “And now, children, what is this?” Holding their prayer ropes in their hands, the children would lift them in a salute, and cry aloud “Our weapons!”
8) Instruct your child in almsgiving and compassion towards those who are in need. And teach them also that they should help in house duties and, if they are old enough, that they should labor at various odd jobs, so that they may learn from an early age that, as the Holy Apostle Paul tells us, one who does not labor should not eat. Idleness and affluence together have, in our society, destroyed countless young people and led them into sin and even an early death. Never be ashamed to say to your child: “We can't afford it.”
9) Teach your child by your own example — and by the examples found in the Holy Scriptures and the Lives of the Saints — that abstinence from food and drink and personal comforts is a noble and beautiful thing, taught to us by our Saviour Himself and by the Saints. Aside from being good for our souls, austerity is also good for our little planet. Whenever I visit our parish of Saint Nectarios in Seattle, there is Divine Liturgy every day. After the service on weekdays, a group of us usually go to a nearby restaurant to have a cup of coffee, a muffin, etc. Over the years, the waitresses have learned about our fast days — “Oh, okay, it's one of those days,” they say, when our orders are particularly small. “Yes,” I reply, “it's a Low Environmental Impact Day.”
10) Be fair if it should ever happen that your child gets into a dispute with another child, or with teachers, or with other authorities. If your child is wrong, he/she is wrong, and show him/her, together with your love and support, why he/she is wrong. Your child will learn something of God's justice from your example.
11) As the years pass, if you persist faithfully in these matters, as you must, you will discover, much to your surprise, that you have grown spiritually also. Saint Paul was quite serious when he said that “a woman shall be saved by childbearing"—and we know and understand that, especially in a society such as ours, both parents are essential for the proper kind of Orthodox Christian spiritual nurturing that is needed.
12) Prepare yourself for a life of spiritual struggles and prayers. You and your children will need them and the grace of God, for we are not living in the world as God originally created it. We are living in occupied territory—a land occupied by the enemy. But, by our holy Faith and God's grace, we are nonetheless a free people, living in hope and expectation of our deliverance in our true and everlasting country. And if we are heedful in these matters, we will have the boldness to say to our Saviour in that last day, “Behold me, your servant, and the children which Thou hast given me.”
By the intercessions of Saints Joachim and Anna, O Christ God, may we, together with all our little ones, be deemed worthy of the Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.
Orthodox Christian Witness
St. Nectarios American Orthodox Church
Seattle, Washington 10300
October 27, 1996
