>What properties do I need to set (boundto, controlsource, displayvalue, etc) to allow the user to select the record for display (without editing the contents of the field, of course).

Have your first column be a field your users can recognize from the parent tbale, your second field the primary key for that record, and bind the control to the forigen key of the child table. Set BoundTo = 2 and BoundColumn = .T.

>Is this a bad methodology? Should I be usiing a different type of object to select the current record?

I use a button that fires up a look up form with a grid of the parent table, then I return the primary key and throw that in to the forigen key. I think, maybe I changed it to return the Record Number and do the value later. I think I'll put to gether a class demostrating this (sincemost of it comes from my framework) and upload it here. Maybe if I find time :-)