From the book “What’s a Parent to Do?” by Glen L. Latham:
A Christlike standard of parenting is set forth to us in the early commitment to family made by Boyd and Donna Packer:
[Donna and Boyd] decided that their mutual occupation would be their family, and that no activity would take precedence over it. Whatever Boyd did to provide for them would be secondary to their mutual responsibility to their children.
To Boyd and Donna these commitments made previous to their marriage were as binding as were the eternal covenants that would follow in the temple (see Tate, 1995, 75).
When President David O. McKay instructed that “no other success in life can compensate for failure in the home” (Improvement Era, June 1964, 445), he spoke an absolute truth. He did not say, almost no success in life can compensate for failure in the home. When President Harold Lee taught that “The greatest of the Lord’s work {that you] will ever do . . . will be within the walls of your own home” (Ensign July 1972, 98; emphasis added), he taught an absolute true doctrine. No exception, no qualifiers. In the spirit of King Benjamin’s instruction to the Nephites, neither President McKay nor President Lee was trifling with words. As with King Benjamin, both, in effect, were saying, “Hearken unto me, and open your ears that ye may hear and your hearts that ye may understand, and your minds that the mysteries of God may be unfolded to your view” (Mosiah 2:9).
Doing what the Lord tells us to do is where good parenting begins. It is the first step toward the realization of the promise of the Lord that “the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto [us]” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:7). But as is typically the case in the quest to reach the high ground from which the best views are obtained, there are trials and even treacheries along the way. There are “thorns and thistles” (Genesis 3:18, and “mist[s] of darkness; yea even . . . exceeding great mist[s] of darkness” that confuse [us] and even cause some to “lose their way,” to wander off and to be lost (see 1 Nephi 8:23). As parents, we suffer deeply when those who wander are our children.
A few years ago the distraught parents of an errant teenage daughter came to see me. The father, tenderly holding the had of his grieving companion, said, “My wife is sure it’s all her fault, that she is a terrible mother.” After I had addressed a group of Latter-day Saints in an adult fireside discussion on parenting, one mother said to me, “There is so much suffering among parents in the Church, I suffer. So many of us suffer. Too many of us suffer too much.”
Another mother sat in my office feeling crushed beneath the confusion over her “failure as a mother.” Tears streamed down her face as she acquainted me with her grief: “It isn’t fair, Brother Latham. It just isn’t fair! I have kept myself clean and unspotted from the world so that I could be a good mother. I served an honorable mission and married in the temple. He, too, served an honorable mission. We did everything we had been taught to do. I don’t know what else we could have done. This just isn’t fair!” (Latham, 1966, 17).
In the fall of 1995, at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, after I had delivered a talk on positive parenting to a large gathering of women at Senator Orrin and Mrs. Elaine Hatch’s annual Women’s Conference, a mother sought me out for help, In desperation then related to me the out-of-control behavior of her older children. Then as tears began to flow, she said, “But probably, worst of all, my marriage is in serious trouble because of it. My husband and I love each other very much. We have had a wonderful marriage, but this is destroying it. Neither or us know what to do about our children or our marriage!”
These are only a few examples of the anguish and confusion experienced by thousands of men and women in and out of the Church, in every walk of life, in every corner of the earth, who are struggling with the thorns and thistles of parenthood. Several years ago, while I was consulting with the Guam Department of Education, a resigned mother of a troubled teenage son said to me, “Dr. Latham, last Sunday I took my son to church and gave him back to the Lord.” Ah, if only it were that easy!
The curious thing about all these parents is that, by and large, they are good people. They are God fearing people who want the best for their children and are doing the best that they know how. They are people who want, more than anything else to be good parents. Even more curious is the fact that in so many ways they are good parents; they just don’t know it. I think of Lehi’s concerns for his children when he said, “I desire that ye should remember the statues and judgments of the Lord; behold, this hath been the anxiety of my soul from the beginning” 2 Nephi 1:16).
What, then, is the measure of a good parent? As I read scripture, study the teachings or the prophets, and consider what research in human behavior has taught us, I have concluded that within the gospel perspective, the measure of a “good parent” is eight-fold:
- Good parents teach their children the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which include the broad Christian messages of honesty, decency, kindness, love of God and fellowman, and so on.
- Good parents are living examples to their children of the principles and teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
- Good parents create within their homes a safe, positive, happy, noncorrosive, non-abusive environment that is under parental control, where the consequences for appropriate and inappropriate behavior are well understood by all and are consistently and lovingly applied.
- Good parents allow their children to exercise their moral agency, then calmly and patiently let the consequences do the teaching.
- Good parents never give up; they pray for their children continually, with faith in Christ.
- Good parents are continually learning and applying better and more effective parenting skills.
- Good parents rise above the misbehavior of their children and happily and confidently get on with life and continue in the faith together.
- Good parents put parenting above all other earthly endeavors.
When these conditions are met, good parenting has been achieved. This is not to say that to be as good parents one never makes mistakes or that nothing will ever go wrong. To draw such a conclusion is shallow, needlessly self-deprecating, and potentially self-destructive.
A distinction must be made between sins and mistakes. To abuse a child in any way is a sin and, by any measure, disqualifies a person as a good parent. To make a poor choice among what appear to be seemingly reasonable and good options is a mistake. Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, speaking at the 1994 BYU Campus Education Week Devotional on “Sins and Mistakes”, drew an important distinction. He said, “A wrong choice in the contest between what is good and what is bad is sin, but a poor choice between things that are good, better, l or best is merely a mistake.” ~Glen L. Latham, What’s a Parent to Do?: (Salt Lake City Deseret Book; 1997) p.7-9
(Elder Boyd K. Packer, deceased, was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.)
