It truly is a crazy world we live in. But it’s even crazier for our kids.
Predators are lurking everywhere: online, at our schools, on the streets; and toxic, life-ruining influences abound. Ill-meaning adults, like wolves in sheep’s clothes, have poisoned the proverbial water of our society with child-harming trends and ideas: normalizing pedophilia, and activist ideologies seeking to recruit kids into radical (political) movements at increasingly young ages. And then there are all the things children see online and in the news: rioting, police brutality, hate, division, and much, much more.
But the next greatest challenge rests on the shoulders of the parents.
It is the parents who must give support, wisdom, and love so those children will be equipped to forge, through their own painful stumbling, their OWN suit of armor and fight for the cause of goodness in a world filled with wickedness. Good parents who love their children and want to teach them to be good people have always been the “silent majority” throughout history, and have allowed civilization to reach where we are—though you might not think it to watch the news these days.
Donnell Goss and his daughter Luna are a good reminder of this underlying truth.
Donnell decided to teach his daughter an important lesson on how to confront all that: not with hate, but with love.
“Luna mentioned George Floyd’s murder and wondered why the cops did what they did,” Donnell told The Epoch Times. “I had to explain to her that just like there’s good apples and bad apples? There are good cops and bad cops and that’s something we can’t control. We CAN control how we conduct ourselves throughout life and we do that through love and respect and never being fearful of things we don’t understand.”
That’s when they parked their car and happened to see the three officers hanging out in the parking lot nearby. “At that moment I knew that this was a perfect teaching moment! I couldn’t have asked for a better-timed situation!” the dad said.
Donnell took Luna to meet the officers.
“As a father, I felt it was my job to debunk that fear by bringing her over to meet guys,” Donnell said. “That’s when the gifts started rolling in from the officers ... stickers, teddy bears, badges, they gave any and every little thing to Luna on that day in the parking lot, and then we took a selfie.”
And what an uplifting selfie it was!
“I started to notice Luna’s dialogue over the past few days and in her confused little 6-year-old brain, she didn’t know whether or not if she should like cops. She started questioning all things in regards to how to feel toward cops (rightfully so).
He then shared some more fatherly wisdom worth remembering: “When you meet hate with love and compassion, there’s no room for that hate to grow.”