Vai's View: The power of parenting

Six months.

That's how much time my wife and I have before we're empty nesters. Our youngest child, Lana, will graduate from high school in June. Sometime in August we expect to send her off to college. My wife often says, "Once they leave for college, they're just visitors in our home." It was certainly true for us. After high school, I came home and worked the summer after my freshman year at BYU and that was the last time I ever lived at home. We married following my mission and after my wife's freshman year, so she never returned home after high school.

It's hard to know if we've taught Lana everything she needs to know before she leaves. In the grand scheme of things, 18 years isn't that much time to teach and inoculate your child with everything she'll need to know once she's on her own. As parents, we're far from perfect but we've done our best.

Three stories this week illustrate how impactful good parenting is to a child's physical and emotional well being. It's hard to imagine the dysfunction Steve Powell created because of the alleged child pornography and voyeurism charges for which he sits in a Washington state jail awaiting trial. Divorced, his children estranged from him and each other, with a son, Josh, who murdered his own children in a horrific way and possibly killed his own wife, Steve Powell was an utter failure as a father. Father and son were reputed to be controlling, manipulative and harbored extremely sexist views of women.

Contrast that with Rick Morrissey's story in the Chicago Sun Times last week about high school basketball phenom Jabari Parker. Parker is the product of an African-American non-LDS father, Sonny, who played in the NBA, and a Tongan, LDS mother named Lola. The youngest of seven children, Jabari attends early-morning seminary and according to the piece, is so humble that he fetches water and towels for the underclassmen during freshman games.

Morrissey quotes Lola, "As parents, we've always instilled certain things," she said. "But there's a time for them to practice it. That's totally up to them. When Jabari leaves to go out of town and I or Sonny can't travel, I look at him and say, 'This is the time to practice all that you have been taught. Don't bring shame to your father's name.' He really understands that."