Good parenting is a skill that should be taught

By Bill Fox/Columnist

It’s a job many of us have yet few of us had any training for. It is of course being a good parent.

We basically learn how to do this from assimilating what our parents did for us.  Fortunately, many of us had good parents, but some were lacking any real role models, thus the need for ‘parenting courses’ in schools.

I am convinced that our schools need to have mandatory courses in Grades 9 and 10 on parenting that every student must take. We need excellent teachers to teach these courses, which would include housekeeping, cooking, finances, and parenting itself.

As I walk into places like the Oshawa Centre I see young boys of perhaps ages 6 or 7 with outlandish haircuts, and I wonder did the parents or their sons decide on that style of hair? I also see youngsters taking ‘hissy fits’ to get their parents to let them have their way!  Sad!

In my opinion, some parents are asking their children questions that never should be asked. The parents should be guiding their children into healthy and proper decisions. I’m making a real assumption here, but would you ask your child what kind or colour of hair they would like? I think it more reasonable to tell them, but perhaps giving them a choice of two options, and in regards to hair, long or short!  Trying to keep their children happy, many parents make mistakes that may have severe ramifications in future years. If a child never hears the word NO about the friends they keep, or the clothes they wear, or hairstyles they have, where will they be as young adults if they have been given no direction?

While being a high school teacher at a Catholic high school, we had a Mass celebration for the entire student body at least four times a year. As a community we celebrated together, the beginning of our school year, the end of the school year and Christmas and Easter.

I was amazed at the number of students who had their parents write notes to excuse them from these assemblies. Did the students control their parents already? Now let me explain that we had a number of non-Catholics of other faiths, and even some Muslims and Hindus whose parents chose to send them to our schools for the Christian values we hopefully taught in all our subject areas.  To my knowledge, it was not those students who brought the notes to be excused from what was a significant community gathering and spiritual celebration.

One day, the word went around school, that there would be an assembly and the guest speaker was to be an 80-year-old priest. I would say that probably 20 per cent of the students either skipped or had notes to be excused from the assembly.  What a fantastic assembly they missed. The priest was “The Junkie Priest”, Father Dan Egan. He had been a parish priest who later devoted himself tirelessly to rehabilitating drug addicts after he was exposed to the local situation.

One Sunday after Mass, a detective related how there was a huge drug problem in their parish.  Father Egan was in disbelief. So the detective offered to have Father Egan present that very midnight where a raid would be taking place in a nearby warehouse, suspected of storing marijuana.

Father Egan was taken into the warehouse after it was secured and was astonished to see bales and bales of marijuana stacked as you might see haystacks. On further analysis by the police it was found that the marijuana was not pure, as it had been diluted with horse manure to double the size of the profits.

Father asked us to imagine two young people smoking this stuff, and saying, “Man this is good shit! (the vernacular for marijuana at the time).”  Exactly what they were ingesting!

A movie and a book about the Junkie Priest soon followed! Sadly, students whose parents wrote notes excusing them from that assembly missed this important life lesson but perhaps were taught another lesson about manipulating their parents!