In PARENTING WITHOUT PERFECTION John Seel does three things well. 

(1) He describes the brutally toxic culture suffocating American children. 

(2) He critiques crisis management techniques which change behavior. 

(3) He commends another approach: treating our children as God our Father deals with us. We must respect their freedom and focus on influencing wills, not  behavior.

Half our children are likely to succumb to either substance abuse, too early sex, accident-prone life styles, law breaking or dropping out of school. A quarter of our teens are likely to yield to more than one of the above.

Less than five percent of teens’ time is spent face-to-face with parents and only another two percent with other adults.

Arising with the Playboy Philosophy, certain decadent time bomb ideas of the 60s are now  exploding around teens of the Year 2000. They make up the first American  generation largely raised without religion. To many adolescents God is self. Love yourself, affirm yourself, unshackle yourself: that is our culture’s message to teens. Hollywood’s culture industry says: forget organized religion and family morality. God is dead. Sex lives.

Most parents just wing it, says John Seel. Others opt to control behavior. They try TEEN HELP, sign waivers to allow extreme techniques for modifying children’s behavior: handcuffs, stun guns, solitary confinement, . Some judges assign young offenders to “boot camps” or “teen courts.”

In useful detailJohn Seel urges parents to imitate  Jesus. For the Good Shepherd leads his willing flock from in front, not driving them from behind. The father of the Prodigal Son teaches us to let adolescents make their own mistakes. We must influence not behavior, but wills.
                     
Dr Seel’s bold advice can also be supplemented. Encourage the young to make a difference in family finances. They may work with peers in 4-H or FFA, keep bees, garden and raise animals. Let teens also empower themselves with proven Christian ascetic practices. For they will follow parents whom they trust into a less permissive spirituality. The Spiritual Exercises of Jesuit Founder St Ignatius Loyola come to this reviewer's mind.
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David John Seel, Jr. PARENTING WITHOUT PERFECTION: BEING A KINGDOM INFLUENCE IN A TOXIC WORLD. Colorado Springs. NavPress. 2000.

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[June 2000 for the INDEPENDENT TORCH.]