TWELVE RULES FOR RAISING CHILDREN

1. Remember that a child is a gift from God, the richest of all blessings. Do not try to mould the child in the image of yourself, your father, your brother or your neighbour. Each child is an individual and should be permitted to be themselves.

2. Don't crush a child's spirit when the child fails. And never compare the child with others who have outshone them.

3. Remember that anger and hostility are natural emotions. Help your child to find socially acceptable out-lets for these normal feelings or they may be turned inward and erupt in the form of physical or mental illness.

4. Discipline your child with firmness and reason. Don't let your anger throw you off balance. If the child knows you are fair you will not lose the child's respect or their love. And make sure the punishment fits the crime, Even the youngest child has a sense of justice.

5. Remember that each child needs two parents. Present a united front. Never join with your child against your mate. This can create in your child (as well of yourself) emotional conflicts of guilt, confusion, and insecurity.

6. Do not hand your child everything their heart desires. Permit the child to know the thrill of earning and the joy of achieving. Grant the child the greatest of all satisfactions - the pleasure that comes with personal accomplishment.

7. Do not set yourself up as the epitome of perfection. This is a difficult roll to play 24 hours a day. You will find it easier to communicate with your child if you let them know that Mom and Dad can err too.

8. Don't make threats in anger, or impossible promises when you are in a generous mood. Threaten or promise only that which you can live up to. To a child, a parent's word means everything. The child who has lost faith in his parents has difficulty believing in anything.

9. Do not smother your child with superficial manifestations of "love". The purest and healthiest love expresses itself in day-in day-out training which breeds self-confidence and independence.

10. Teach your child there is dignity in hard work, whether it is performed with calloused hands that shovel coal or skilled fingers that manipulate surgical instruments. Let them know a useful life is a blessed one and a life of ease and pleasure-seeking is empty and meaningless.

11. Do not try to protect your child against every small blow and disappointment. Adversity strengthens character and makes us compassionate. Trouble is the great equalizer. Let the child learn it.

12. Teach your child to love God and love their fellows. Dont't send your child to a place of worship - take them there. Children learn from example. Telling them something is not reaching the child. If you give your child a deep and abiding faith in God it can be their strength and their light when all else fails.

THE TORONTO STAR