Things Daddy Taught Me

Johnny Jones, 5 April  2002

I'm the person who, if I were in a group doing something wrong, would be the one to get caught. And punished. If one time in my life I decided to get roaring drunk high in the Andes in the only bar of a remote village, I'd walk out and immediately run into someone I know.  I've never been to the Andes, never tried this -- I just know!

It certainly seemed like I raised kids the hard way. I'd stay in the kitchen cooking fresh vegetables instead of tossing a Budget Gourmet dinner in the shopping cart. We played Candyland five hundred times rather than turn to television as a perennial baby sitter. We enforced mealtimes, bedtimes, practice times. Why? Sometimes it seemed out of sheer perversity. Because early on, I couldn't see much difference all this effort was making. And looking at the end product, all kids grow up eventually. Most of them turn out more or less responsible.

"But," I told myself, "I don't know of anyone who says their childhood was meaningless." Good or bad, indifferent or intense, it made a difference. It's impossible to deny. Everyone can tell a story about something that happened when they were a child that influenced their adult life.

For example, my Daddy encouraged my sister Jo and me and go see Mrs. Vickers when we were about ten or older. How awful! Mrs. Vickers was old, and wore shapeless floral-printed dresses and shoes with low heels that tied. Furthermore, she dipped snuff; her spitting can attested to that.

But we did go see her. Before long we were interested in her stories about people and places long ago. We stopped thinking of her as an old lady and saw her as the person she was.

Another hot summer day we had little to do, Daddy said, "Why don't you go see Mrs. Roberts?" We went with less encouragement this time. It seemed less scary, with more potential for fun.

I'm still interested in new situations and meeting different people. Could it have been those times with older neighbors that helped my courage?

Remembering scenes like those gave me the suspicion that our attempts at doing things the hard way would pay off. Chip told me, after another evening of Monopoly, "Time with our kids now is like putting money in the bank. We'll have a relationship when they get to be teenagers."

As usual, Chip was right. Another reason I kept going was my belief that parents can help build their children's character. I actually looked on child-rearing as an adventure. Would our efforts at building responsibility help our children feel more secure? Would our devotional times help mold their values?

I have high hopes that the energy we've expended will pay off. I agree with children's writer and researcher, Marie Winn. She says couples who are bent primarily on self-fulfillment or high-powered careers would do well to think twice about producing offspring. Those who do become parents should be willing to sacrifice their own time for supervision of the kids. She also said something else I learned by experience - that youngsters between the ages of 6 and 12 required just as much time and attention as toddlers.

So maybe it's just as well I've never been able to take the easy way out. Maybe that's part of the sense of the road the Bible describes leading to life everlasting. It's not wide, or easy. It's narrow and filled with mudholes and gravel. But the joy set before us makes it worth every step.