Aug

Every Parent’s Nightmare

The headlines in the first week of August shocked Filipinos: Ivan Padilla, leader of the car theft gang at 23, dead in a shootout with police agents.

It wasn’t his death that people talked about. Mostly, it was the fact that at age 23, he was a criminal, the leader of a gang that stole cars at gunpoint which they then sold cheaply to finance their drug addiction.

When his mother was interviewed after his death, she deplored the manner by which her son was killed, going so far as to say that he was an educated fellow, and should have been given a chance to reform. Ivan Padilla’s mother herself is in prison on drug charges.

Well. I feel for Mrs. Padilla. Every single day, we try to look for reasons to be proud of our kids. We want to tell our friends, relatives, neighbors, co-parents and acquaintances the many wonderful things that our children are now able to do. No parent ever wishes for their child to stray from the righteous path and be their source of shame and embarrassment.

Someone well-known once said:…A degree is not education.

I guess this means that we simply can’t subcontract our task of educating our children to schools, even the best ones.

That is a flashing neon sign for all of us parents: Our work does not stop the moment we start sending our kids to good schools, buying them loads of books, nice clothes and shoes, feeding them well and setting up trust funds.

The other day, my sister-in-law was telling me about the difficulties of parenting a teenager. She said that it does get tiring sounding like a broken record. However, she goes on to say that, if she stopped giving constant reminders to her teenage boy, she might end up regretting it.

Being too busy making money to give THEM “a good life” no longer seems an acceptable excuse for failing to spend time with our kids and teach them the proper values in order to help make them responsible citizens. The last thing we want is for them to become a menace to society.