Parenting lesson from the life of Dr. Martin Luther King

What is the one very important job for which there is little training or pay?

The answer is being a parent, the most critical job anyone tackles.

Parents are the first teachers of any human being and the classroom the place where learning takes place.

By the time they enter formal educational system children already have learned a great deal, mostly from parents, that will last into their adult years.

Think about the early years of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as an example of how parents influence their children.

In his autobiography, Dr. King recalls an event that shaped his life.

His father took him to a downtown store to buy new shoes.

When they entered the store, it was empty. His father sat upfront as a young white clerk came to wait on them.

It was the segregated 1930s so the young clerk said he would serve them if they moved to the back.

Dr. King’s father responded there was nothing wrong with the seats they were in, but the clerk insisted they had to move to the back.

Dr. King’s father responded: “We’ll either buy shoes sitting here or we won’t buy any shoes at all.”

He took his young son’s hand and walked out, saying to him: “I don’t care how long I have to live with this system, I will never accept it.”

If you think about these words in the light of Dr. King’s later life, they are prophetic, recalling the boycott in Montgomery, Alabama where he led a protest the bus company requiring African Americans to sit in the back.

There is an important lesson to be learned from the story of Dr. King’s childhood — it is not just what parents say that matter but how they act.

And words and actions must harmonize else a child learns not to trust others. Dr. King’s words were matched by his behavior — he walked out of the store when the clerk refused to let them sit up front.

The poet Wordsworth wrote these cryptic lines: “The child is father to the man” — lines I never understood until later in life when I found myself drawn to poetry (from my mother) or to Shakespeare (from my father).

We absorb feelings and thoughts from parents in our earliest years and only discover them lurking there inside ourselves later.

The trick is being aware of these influences enough to make our own choices about which to accept and which to deny hold on our own lives.

I believe everyone has a memory of something their parents said or did that had a lasting impact on their futures, whether good or bad.

What our parents as teachers show us by word and example are how to live.

We can choose as adults how much of those teachings to continue in the present.

We may be shaped by our parents’ behaviors but not controlled by them if we are aware of their influences on us.

We absorb feelings and thoughts from parents in our earliest years and only discover them lurking there inside ourselves later.