Published: October 12, 2006 08:27 am      

The safety of our children

When I look back and remember my childhood I am filled with memories of carefree play times with my friends, playing “within earshot” as my friend’s mother used to say.

I think of how we said the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and were taught pride in our country and in being the best at whatever we did. Back then the thing parents worried about was if you turned out like Fonzie from Happy Days rather than a doctor or lawyer or whatever they hoped for.

Now the worries of a parent have grown to include the need to be aware that they might go to school someday and get shot in a Columbine-like shooting. My mother worried that I might bring home a bad grade, not ever considering that I might not make it back at all.

Of course there’s also the possibility that they won’t even make it to school in the first place, or maybe they’ll make it through the day but won’t make it home because some pervert has decided that his sexual need is stronger than your child’s right to life and your right to watch them grow.

And that’s all before we get to the topic of drug dealers pushing drugs on kids and messing up their lives. All a drug dealer cares about is the money and drugs, not the kids whose lives will be destroyed or the families they are tearing apart.

The dangers for children have now grown to astronomical proportions from so many different directions. Not only do they have to be careful about what they do, what they wear, what they say, how they look or what their grades are, like we did. Now they must also have to be on the lookout for who they talk to and associate with — not because they might gossip about them, like we had happen — because if they aren’t very careful they might end up dead at the hands of some lunatic.

But what is to be done about it? How do we keep them safe? How do we make sure that our children arrive at adulthood as unscathed as possible?

There are two things that need to be done to begin making life safer for our children.

The first one is to make the penalties for hurting our children more severe. Sixty days in lock up is not a deterrent for raping a child repeatedly, but 10 years for a first offense with 25 five years being the minimum for a second offense — Jessica’s law.

The other thing is to once again teach our children the same moral values we were taught. Instill in our children, as our parents and teachers did in us, the desire to do the right thing rather than the easy thing. We must empower them with a drive to be the best they can be rather than to be one of the crowd. The only way to do this is to let God back in the schools where’s He’s been so sorely missed.

I want our kids to have the best life they can have. They can’t get there on their own. They need our protection, support and love. They also need our guidance. As God says in Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way they should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

Remember some day our children will be running this country. Don’t you think they should be prepared for the job?

Melissa Pehle-Hill is a guest columnist. She lives in Athens.