I refer to last Sunday's article, 'When teens have consensual sex...'

It was dismaying yet revealing that the audience addressed by the Attorney-General at his talk, Changing Social Mores: Protecting Children From Themselves?, comprised solely teachers, social workers and government representatives. The topic focused on how the law here dealt with the issue of underage sex, yet not a single parent was represented.

It is time we took an honest look at ourselves as parents and began answering some tough questions.

Could we be the contributing factors to the lack of self-respect, esteem and dignity in our teenage children so that they need to search for the wrong type of love in the wrong places?

Are we impervious to their deep needs and confusions? Are we afraid that we will lose their affections and respect if we are strict in guiding them on the right path?

Worse yet, have we bought into the lie that because it takes a whole village to raise a child, then let us just sit back and allow it to do so?

Our children have to endure a blaring and confusing world out there. Amid the billboards, magazines and movies that scream out for their attention and vie to seduce them with consumerist materialism and self-gratification, our children desperately need to hear our steady voices of reason.

They need to know that boundaries are enforced, with swift discipline if breached.

But this has to originate at home and not in the courthouse.

The problem is that we have turned parenting into a science of neuroses, flocking to every seminar and reading every book on how best to raise our children, when bearing and raising children was designed to be as simple and natural as breathing.

Our children are a reflection of ourselves and of our input in their lives - so what are our values and what are we basing our wisdom on? The truth is that if we train a child in the way he should go, then when he is older, he will not depart from it. What, then, is the way that he should go?

That is a journey of discovery every parent must embark on for each individual child. It will never be found in any book, but in the spending of much time and the lavishing of much love with wisdom.

Athena D'souza (Mrs)

This article was first published in The Straits Times.