• Praying my kids won’t do drugs

As a parent, you always want your children to grow up and achieve the best in life. You’d wish they are obedient and well mannered. Good grades in school. Have the best in education and which hopefully leads to an illustrious career with good money. Simply, you wish them to have a better life than you do. If your child grow up to embrace all the characteristics above, I congratulate you.

For me though, I’d rather pray my children won’t get involved in sinful addictions like drugs, alcohol, smoking, gambling and such. I’ve seen these addictions ruin more lives than I care to count. Even if none of my children make it to MIT, Stanford or Yale, I’d rather not see them ending up in a drug rehab or alcohol management.

Our children will grow up battling their own devils - peer pressure, stress, relationship problems, anger, greed, envy, curiosity - and many more traits that lead to those addictions. But as parents, I see it as our jobs to educate our kids that it is very ‘uncool’ to do drugs, alcohol, gamble or smoke. That is a good start. Also, I applaud government efforts and awareness campaigns on anti-substance abuse.