by Anthony Kane, MD

A certain educator was once asked at what point should a parent begin to prepare for child raising.

"How old are you?" educator inquired. "Twenty-three." "You should begin twenty-three years ago."

What is message? The single most important thing a parent can do to educate a child is to provide child with a good role model. A parent has to work a whole lifetime becoming type of person that he wants his child to become.

The most important people in world in child's eyes are his parents. They are his first and most important teachers. The behavior of a child's parents leaves a permanent impression in child's subconscious mind. Why is this so? The reason is that most reliable source of priorities and values in a child's eyes is his parents. Children have an innate trust in their parents. They feel that everything their parents say and do is true and proper way to behave.

We all wish our children would do what we say and not what we do. However, this is not how mind of a child works. The intellect of a child is undeveloped. As a result, children function an emotional level, absorbing more from what they see and hear around them than from what they are taught.

By that time, eldest Dotson child had moved on and now slept in a wood framed bunk bed hand crafted by our father. In a family of five, he was only to sleep solo. This left me as senior child in family bed, a title that lent me a certain amount of privilege, and these are days I remember most when I think back to last time I slept in same bed with someone under age of two.

I remember stories of my infancy, more from telling and re-telling, I am sure, than from genuine memory; countless friends and family have heard of night, sleep deprived and exhausted, that my mother lay me down to sleep next to my father. I slept huddled in his arms on side of bed, my mother an ocean away on her end of king size waterbed. Lured by scent of her leaking breasts and some clearly primal instinct, I managed, at just a few months of age, to roll over my father and across broad expanse until my lips at last found relief of my mother’s waiting nipple. This could have been my first successful experience at rolling over. Suffice to say, mom did not sleep as anticipated, but who could deny such determination?