THE SORT OF PARENT EVERY CHILD NEEDS

 Johann Christoph Arnold

 Looking back now, with a grandfather's perspective, I can see that I had
the best dad a child could wish for. Of course, I didn't really appreciate
that fact until I found myself agonizing over my own teenagers. I've had
eight. But when parents ask me for advice, I tell them about my father.

 His father, theologian Eberhard Arnold, once said that raising children
should mean "helping them to become what they already are in God's mind." My
siblings and I received such consideration from our father throughout our
upbringing, and the result was a relationship of mutual love and trust that
lasted, unbroken, to the end of his life.

 Of course, this relationship was grounded in plenty of old-fashioned
discipline, including scoldings so loud and dramatic (especially if we
sassed our mother) that we would be shamefaced for hours, certain that the
neighbors had heard every word. Name-calling and mockery were cardinal sins
in our house. Like boys and girls anywhere, we sometimes made fun of adults
whose peculiarities made them stick out. But my father failed to see any
humor in it. He had a nose for cruelty and would not tolerate it for a
minute.

 Still, his temper never lasted for long. Once when I was eight or nine, I
angered my father so much that he threatened to spank me. As I waited for
the first blow, I looked up at him and, before I knew what I was doing,
blurted out, "Papa, I'm really sorry. Do what you have to do - but I know
you still love me." To my astonishment, he leaned down, put his arms around
me and said with a tenderness that came from the bottom of his heart:
"Christoph, I forgive you." My apology had completely disarmed him.

 This incident made me realize how much my father loved me, and taught me a
lesson I have never forgotten - one I drew on in dealing with my own
children years later: Don't be afraid to give a child a straight word, but
the moment you feel he is sorry, be sure there is immediate and complete
forgiveness on your part.

 In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky writes, "There is nothing higher
and stronger and more wholesome for life in the future than some good
memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a
great deal about education. But some good, sacred memory preserved from
childhood - that is perhaps the best education. For if a man has only one
good memory left in his heart, even that may keep him from evil...And if he
carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe for the end of his
days."

 As a child of European immigrants who fled to South America during World
War II, I grew up in what I now see was poverty. For the first several years
of my life, I was often hungry. Yet, I would find it hard to imagine a
happier childhood. Why? Because my parents gave us children time and
attention on a daily basis. For instance, they always ate breakfast with us
before we went off to school each morning, no matter how hectic their
schedules. They did this until my youngest sister graduated from high
school.

 My father was a gifted pastor and spiritual writer. But when, as a
refugee, the only job he could find was gardening in a leper colony, he made
nothing of it. He said only that there was honor in doing the humblest
service for others, and doing it gladly. As I grew up, hard physical work
was part of daily life. One did not need to look for it. There was no indoor
plumbing, no central heating, and, for many years, no electricity. Meals
were cooked on an open fire, and there was always wood to split and stack
and water to carry. As a teenager, I grumbled incessantly about the
never-ending chores, but my father had no pity. And in retrospect I am
grateful. I see now how his insistence taught me self-discipline,
concentration, perseverance, and the ability to carry through--all things
you need to be a father.

 Few parents I know carry water anymore, but they're fooling themselves if
they think raising a child doesn't involve hard work. Janusz Korczak once
wrote, "There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they
are the most precious. Seek in your child the undiscovered part of
yourself." My wife, Verena, and I gained plenty of "insights born of pain"
in the course of bringing up our children. Like most parents, there is
plenty we would do differently if we had the chance to do it again.
Sometimes we unfairly assumed bad motives; at other times we had the wool
pulled over our eyes; one day we were too lenient; the next, too strict. Of
course, we did learn several basic lessons as well.

 As conventional wisdom goes, teenage angst is "just a phase." Adolescents
have always chafed under parental authority, and they always will. When
rebellion becomes a way of life, however, we cannot just brush it off. What
is it that today's children are rebelling against so vigorously, and why? To
me, the answer is simple: Far too often, children are taught to "do as I
say, not as I do."

 Being a father, I know how hard it is to be consistent - and how easy it
is to send confusing signals without even realizing it. Having counseled
hundreds of teenagers over the last three decades, I also know how sensitive
young adults are to mixed messages and inconsistent boundaries, and how
readily they will reject both as clear signs of parental hypocrisy. But I
have also learned how quickly the worst family battle can be solved when
parents are humble enough to admit that their expectations were unclear or
unfair, and how quickly most children will respond. Few experiences brought
me as close to my children as the times I overreacted but then realized it
and asked them to forgive me.

 Speaking from my own experience as a teen, I don't know what I would have
done without the trust my father showed me, even though there were plenty of
times when I frustrated or disappointed him. Rather than distancing himself
from me over those incidents or taking them personally, he used them as
occasions for deepening our relationship. My father used to tell me - and
this has always stayed with me -"I would rather be betrayed a dozen times
than live in mistrust." There is nothing that draws a parent and child as
close as such loyalty.

 Credit: Johann Christoph Arnold is a family counselor and author of ten books,
including "Endangered: Your Child in a Hostile World."