Some Aspects of Parental Responsibility

What we mean by upbringing and education depends on what we mean by human being, by reality and by life. Do we place our emphasis on survival, on being 'good citizens' and independent adults or are we interested in the communal life, in ethical personality and creative maturity. The gap between these two can widen at times. Human beings feel responsible for all children in their community, not only for their own. We realize that what we do for children we do for ourselves too, since our own ongoing maturity depends on it. The upbringing of children therefore implies first and foremost the setting of examples of maturity, while education is what we mean by any and every effort to withdraw any child from the effects of bad upbringing and from mis-education. Special attention is paid to the 'abnormal' child, the 'autistic child', with the emphasis on abnormality as a blessing for the parent who is lost in an unreal, categoric 'norm'.