by Pierrette Komarek

Created on: December 20, 2008   Last Updated: March 26, 2011

I think so..having raised six children my self, and seeing the way they now behave as adults, it is evident that they will always carry the behavior, the morals that they learned at home. Just as I did learn from my own French parents. ( except for a few minor modifications)... I raised my children as I was. Of course we all had to adjust to the times and places, and since my own upbringing was done in North Africa, where young girls couldn't go out unless they were chaperoned, this I could hardly impose on my five daughters here in America! Having arranged marriages as it was done over there was also a No No! But then when you see the divorce rates now in our country, when two out of three marriages are destined to fail, one must wonder which culture was right in the first place!

Many years ago on the old Art Linklettershow, he had a child Psychologist who said a very wise thing I never forgotten-when he admonished parents that "there are dozens of ways to bring up children, but the only one that really works, is by EXAMPLES!" no truer words were ever spoken..we can tell whatever we want to our kids, we can bribe, we can threaten . but in the end, your children most likely will learn by the way they see you behave - just as sometimes some kids go out of their ways not to act as their parents did, if they were Alcoholics, intolerant of other people religions or race etc..this too is a way of learning, although sometimes it back fires and they too become intolerant of their own parents! One only has to watch TV and see the crimes, the aberrations committed by young adults- the mass murders in the Schools, as we did in Colorado and other places, and not wonder, who raised those monsters? where was the love of their parents, to have filled their kids with such hate? We now see a lot of suicides even in young adults, and think of the despair it must take for someone to take their own lives..but what of the regrets this impose on their family, who then are fated to live with remorse for the rest of their lives!

I believe the best quote on this, was said by the late and elegant Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis when she wrote: "If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do will matter very much." How right she was..for finally whatever we may have accomplished in our lives, the material things we may have acquired, nothing can compare to having a family you can be proud of, and children and grandchildren who love you and who shows this in many ways. For in the end, what you'll get back is like the statements at the bank, the dividends, the interests always show what you have invested in..so you'll either be in the red or in the black.. But personally I like the French saying that goes: "Tout en moderation, meme dans la moderation." (Everything in moderation, including in moderation.) Aaah oui!

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