8. DO NOT GIVE THE CHILD EVERYTHING HIS LITTLE HEART DESIRES.
You can destroy people by taking away their dignity, ability and desire to work for and possess their own things. Over-doting paternalism will kill and stifle individuality and make the recipient a mere puppet of the giver. Show children the glory and manliness of work. To give them toy trains, cars, spaceships and guns when they need love and companionship is to give them stones instead of bread. The concept of giving children complete freedom--plus every material thing they want, with little or no responsibility on their shoulders seems to have produced a generation of irresponsible adults.

It is a tragedy of the first order for a child to grow up thinking there is nothing more important than a new car, a new house, or new clothes, to put his whole values on things you can touch and taste and feel. Young people will not learn to stand on their own two feet so long as others underwrite them. I'll never forget the pathetic sight of a stooped and aged mother coming to court to pay her 45-year-old son's drunkenness fine. You don't help people by mopping up after them and their wrong-doings. Let them pay the penalty for their wrongs. It is God's and nature's way of warning against violating basic laws. Give your child the important intangibles, not the transient tangibles. Give him the gift of imagination, curiosity and a sense of "oughtness."

9. TEACH THE CHILD TO THINK.
The glory of man lies in his intellect. Man is and ought to be a thinking creature. The world's troubles arise from warped thinking. We win our victories and lose our battles in the mind. We need to learn right thinking. Someone has said that half the world's problems come from acting by feeling, when we ought to be thinking; and the other half from acting by thinking, when we ought to be feeling. Learn the distinction between them, and teach your child. Right thinking comes from right standards and values. If the values are wrong, the thinking will be wrong and the decision will be wrong. These processes reveal the basic weakness of wrong values. Many of us have had to revolutionize our values in later life to get our lives right. Teach the child to think and in the process you'll sharpen your own faculties. Right decisions come from right thinking, and right thinking comes from right values, and right values come from right training.

10. BUILD COURAGE IN THE CHILD
The child ought not to be exposed to fear and terror. Build the positive attribute of courage in the child. Courage is the keystone of character. It is in short supply in our times. Teach the child that fear is the unholy ghost, and that he need fear only fear itself. Teach the child that he can conquer the world if he will not bow to fear. Courage comes from being reconciled with God, with self and with your fellowman. It comes from righteousness. Solomon said, "The righteous are bold as lions, but the wicked flee when no man pursueth." We need people with starch in their spines and with convictions for which they would ultimately die. I heard a congressman speak the other day, and I realized how badly we need Patrick Henrys and Thomas Jeffersons in our legislatures today.

A generation ago, so-called liberal progressives advised mothers to avoid whipping the child and inflict no physical punishment, saying the child is emoting, developing his personality, and that corporal punishment might warp his personality. In other words, they advocated the doctrine of permissiveness. Now, some are seen leading a band of "peacenik" demonstrators, and draft card burners. They apparently have spawned off on us a generation of physical and moral cowards. Physical and moral courage are different qualities, but a man must have both if he would be great. Build the attribute of courage and manliness in your child. Do this by showing him the virtues of manhood and womanhood in your life. Teach your child to play the part of a man or woman, and not a whiner and excuse maker.

11. EXPOSE YOUR CHILD TO THE INFLUENCE OF WHOLESOME LEADERS AND EXEMPLARY PEOPLE.
The child's mind is plastic and like a sponge, soaking in that to which it is exposed. That makes it critically important to help shape the environment of the child. Who would knowingly put his child in a pit of rattlesnakes? Who would put his child's mind in company with evil, unsavory and morally depraved people? Many do that very thing. Invite Christians, preachers, the police chief, the mayor, civic leaders and other such to your table. Expose the child to people who stand for things worthwhile, and who have high and noble convictions . By so doing, you will infuse into the very warp and woof of their being a kindred nobility of mind.