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PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTION

What can children and parents do in this bleak situation? Plenty!!!

The major responsibility for protecting children resides with the parents and the parents alone. It is a sacred responsibility that can never be delegated to local schools, churches, or other organizations.

First, one must face up to one’s own home situation, and recognize and objectively confront and surmount any problems that may exist there. Often, child abuse or evidence of other criminal or deviant behavior is tolerated in the home.

Next, parents must take a serious look at the total environment in which their children exist, assess the threats that exist there, persons, places, groups, and behaviors-begin to systematically warn children of these threats, and give them ways of avoiding them.

Although children can do little to defend themselves physically against older children or adults, when they are made aware of the dangers and the potential consequences of deviant behavior, no matter how “cool” that may seem, they can intelligently avoid the dangerous persons, places, and situations. It is precisely in this critical area of awareness-building that the parent is best equipped to function. This is no one-time, five-minute task, however. It requires constant awareness and attention to local developments, reading crime reports in local newspapers, watching local TV. keeping abreast of neighborhood gossip and activities, and encouraging close frank exchanges of information with your children. It also requires firmness and perseverance on the part of the parent, in order to be convincing to the child.