Lewis Carroll said, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” But when it comes to raising our children according to the values we consider non-negotiable, Yogi Berra said it better: “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.”

Anyone who’s been paying attention over the last decade or two knows that raising children today is a much different experience than it was for previous generations. Twenty or thirty years ago, when our parents sent us out the door to school, the playground, or the marketplace, they could reasonably assume that the other people we’d encounter shared more or less the same values they held. This is not so nowadays, unfortunately.

A cultural tornado has upended the world we live in, and parents who believe in, practice, and teach their children traditional values like responsibility, self-discipline, respect for self and others, and abstinence till marriage are not only in the minority, but are vilified and undermined as backwards, stupid, and even abusive by much of the rest of society. Our kids are actively turned against us, our authority, and our values. Much of the world would like to drop a house on top of us and then lead our children down roads we know don’t lead to any kind of Emerald City.

So, what do parents do?

We must recognize that their families and children are under attack. We must prepare our children for what’s coming at them from the world. We must fortify our homes and steel our nerves for the battle. We must bullet-proof our kids and our families.

We must understand how to apply time-tested principles and techniques for parenting our children so they can grow up to be healthy adults.