Parental control - what does this mean and what are we to do? First of all, where is the parental control in our society today? It used to be that parents knew where their kids were and what they were doing, who they were with and when they were to be home. When they did not abide by the rules and boundaries they were given, they were disciplined. This discipline not only benefited the family but also the teachers and classmates of the child, the overall quality of life and success of the child in the future.

Today, where are our parents and what are they in control of? Many parents are working a combined total of over ninety hours per week. They are in dead end jobs, with little or no hope of being promoted or having greater opportunity to have more time with their families in the future. Many parents rarely know where their children are. This is due to the fact that a large number of our nation's youth go to an empty house after school. Now the parent in no longer in control of what they desire to do, or rather know they should be doing, but they have very little control over their children either.

This lack of parental control not only affects the child's behavior and overall success in all areas of life, it affects the classrooms they are in as well. If there is not parental control in the home, there is little control at school. Children that have no discipline anywhere else in their lives, are told they are required to abide by the rules at school and look out for one another, when neither has been modeled for them. This causes the teachers to not be able to teach the children in the way they ought and the students fall further and further behind.

The parents, in return, wonder why their child is not succeeding and slowly over time lose hope in him or her succeeding at all. The parent feels like a failure and spends more time at work, or at least away from his or her child, in order to cope with the chaos in their lives and their child's life, due to the lack of discipline and control the parent has over the household. There is a great reason why the Bible explicitly states that the father is to be the head of the household, that the older women teach the younger and the older men teach the younger men. If there is no one modeling what it looks like to live in a way that they should, how are they to learn? If they are never disciplined, either because the parent desires to be the child's friend or because the parent is absent from the home, what is the child to do in the world? Parents must step up and regain control of their homes and families or we soon will find ourselves living in a world far worse than the chaos we find in our homes, for these children we choose to not discipline are our future.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Parental Control.