Yet warm, trusting relationships with adults are required if moral and spiritual guidance is to be reclaimed. (167) The church is perhaps the only institution with the beliefs, literature, liturgy, practices, social structure and authority (diminished though it be) necessary to rescue children from the violence and other deforming features of late 20th-century life. But it cannot accomplish this by simply laying the faith before young people and inviting them to choose it.

Furthermore, the pulpit offers perhaps the only remaining locus of personal and public edification and exhortation. (166)

Prayer is crucial. It teaches children to reflect on their own lives and on the world around them. It provides breathing space from the overstimulation of our society. Attending to how to pray and for whom to pray trains children to focus on the welfare of others and on world events.

Prayerbooks are wonderful resources; they contain prayers for travelers, for those far away, for the sick, for those living alone, for government leaders, for an end to civil strife, for proper use of natural resources. We should also teach children to pray for virtues like compassion, courage, cheerfulness and charity. (167)

Charry, Ellen T. Raising Christian children in a pagan culture

Christian Century 111 no 5 F. 16, 1994, p 166-168.

1994

Because the Bible was regarded as central to Christian life, the importance of learning to read was emphasized.

The idea of divine judgment and hell is only to be introduced about age fifteen, since younger children would find it too frightening, while such fear could protect adolescents from self-destructive behavior (489)

He also suggests that when teenagers behave well and avoid self-destructive activities the pastor should praise them for this, and their parents should also praise them publicly. (490)

Early Christian writers emphasize the importance of providing children with good models to emulate. Parents are advised to show them examples of good character and conduct in the Bible and the lives of Christian saints. They are...

If they are moved to emulate such friends, this will become more important to them than the entertainments were
Augustine explores the darker side of peer pressure in his analysis of the famous incident in which as a youth he and his thrill-seeking friends stole pears they did not want to eat from a neighbor's tree (492)

So Chrysostom regards it as very important that parents guard these gates against harmful influences, such as those of bad companions and vulgar entertainment, which can excite passions that grow into destructive obsessions or addictions.47 He suggests that parents point young people toward more wholesome forms of entertainment, such as beneficial stories and good books, the beauties of nature education was essential to prepare boys for successful careers in adulthood and enable them to participate in the broader cultural world in which they lived. So Christian parents had to give their children this kind of schooling, but see that its lessons were interpreted and applied in appropriate ways.(493)

Chrysostom compares this growth to that of a tree whose branches reach out toward all that is good. Advising mothers to train their daughters in all the virtues, he summarizes the purposes and rewards of Christian parenthood:

If you mold her completely in this way, you will save not only her but also the husband who will marry her, not only the husband but also the children, not only the children but also the grandchildren. For when the root becomes good, the shoots are outstretched toward what is better, and for all these you will receive the reward. Therefore, let us do all things so as to help not one soul alone, but many through the one (494).

Harrison, Nonna Verna. Raising Them Right: Early Christian Approaches To Child Rearing

Theology Today 56 no 4 Ja 2000, p 481-494. 2000