John Latham and his views on parenting

For this post, I will include a link at the bottom for you to access the video by John Latham on parenting and coercion.  But first, here are my notes from the video:

Latham’s “Measure of a Good Parent”

  1. Good parents teach their children the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which includes the broad Christian messages of honesty, decency, kindness, love of God and fellowman, and so on.
  2. Good parents are living examples to their children of the principles and teachings of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
  3. Good parents create within their homes a safe, positive, happy, noncoercive, nonabusive environment that is under parental control, where the consequences for apropriate and inappropriate behavior are well understood by all and are consistently and lovingly applied.
  4. Good parents allow their children to exercise their moral agency, then calmly and patiently let consequences do the teaching.
  5. Good parents never give up; they pray for their children continually, with faith in Christ.
  6. Good parents are continually learning and applying better, more effective parenting skills.
  7. Good parents rise above the misbehavior of their children and happily and confidently get on with life and continue in the faith together.
  8. Good parents put parenting above all other earthly endeavors.

I especially like that he mentions continually learning and applying those better parenting skills throughout your life.  This really helps us recognize the need for personal growth and understanding that we will make mistakes but can learn from them and come out stronger and better parents.

The following quote he made at the end of his video really struck my spirit with truth (underlining and bold print added by me for emphatic purposes):


“Well-meaning parents who have tried their best should avoid the temptation of using their children’s behavior as the measure of their success as parents. If children’s behavior were the sole measure of good parenting, our heavenly parents would not qualify. They lost a third of their children before mortality was even available, and very probably countless more since. Remember this: Perfect parents make no mistakes; imperfect parents do. Both have children who stray.”
                                   ~Glenn Latham

 https://archive.org/details/Latham_chapter1_clip01

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