Teaching Your Children Poem by Randy McClave

If you don't want your child to smoke
Then toss your cigarettes and cigars away,
Inform them how tobacco causes cancer or a stroke
Then for them, just pray.
Let them know that smoking is bad for them,
And all it does is make their life unhealthy, smelly and grim.

If you don't want your child to drink alcohol
Which Is no good for the spirit or the body,
Then let them know it causes the soul's own downfall
It just gets one drunk and makes them feel shoddy.
Indeed it is the drink of the weak,
When a quick escape they desperately seek.

If you don't want your child to take drugs or pot
Let them know that it's wrong and it is a sin,
Then don't allow it to be sold or bought
And if they sell it or buy it or use it, it's never a win.
Unto any person it is never kind,
It destroys both the body and also the soul and mind.

If you don't want your child to ever curse or swear
Tell them not to ever be a canary,
Then teach them how to say a personal prayer
Then take them out and buy them a dictionary.
People are judged and measured by the words they know,
It allows the mind to grow.

If you don't want your child to be a racist or a bigot
Tell them this, we are each others sister and brother,
In any racial doctrine don't ever support or believe in it
Jesus said to always love and care for each other.
Remember, even though we have different colored skin,
We are all equal as women and men.

Randy L. McClave