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One of our deepest desires as parents, is that our children grow to be known as men and women of integrity. We desperately hope that they will have good health and achieve their scholastic and career dreams, but above these issues, we are concerned for their inner selves their characters.

We watch our adorable baby daughter with absolute wonder. From the moment we first knew of her existence, deep inside me, we prayed for her perfect development of body, mind and soul. We stand in amazement, watching her grow and learn. Faltering movements are becoming purposeful and babbling sounds assuming meaning.

In our minds, it is such a short time since her big brother was tentatively taking his first steps, yet now, he is halfway to legal adulthood. Having mastered running, jumping and scaling tall objects long ago - along with the art of argument and persuasion, we now watch as he is learning deeper, more intrinsic life skills: honesty, reliability, trustworthiness-integrity.

Ther e is a constant weight of responsibility inextricably bound to parenthood. What is shown to, and sown into, little lives will be harvested in adult lives. We can no more expect to raise children to be men and women of integrity if we are not shining examples of such, than expect to pick beautiful blooms if all we cultivate is weeds.

In a cutthroat, consumer driven world, integrity is often not obvious. Neither, sadly, is it consistently rewarded. We cannot rely on others to teach our children how to live lives of integrity.

Integrity needs to be experienced and demonstrated from the very basic building blocks of life and must permeate every aspect of the home and family existence. Children adapt easily to the normalities of the environment in which they are immersed, so to assist them to grow into beacons of integrity, those of us who are parents must make every effort to have a home life beyond reproach. (No one ever said parenting was easy-conversely, I would call it the most demanding and crucial role a person could ever undertake.)

I firmly believe that, to sow seeds of integrity, the soil of a child's life must be prepared with love. A child must have the certainty that they are loved without condition or reason. A child needs to be able to depend on the constancy of their parents' love for them, regardless of situations or circumstances. From birth, (and perhaps earlier) a baby is profoundly affected by the way the mother (primarily) relates to him/her. A child whose heart is securely filled

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