Sunday, April 6, 2008

Raising Responsible, Resourceful, Respectful, Resilient... and Compassionate Children

This weekend I made several learning/life lesson charts - don't know if they are mainly for me or the kids yet! One was my own adaptation to Robert Fulghum's classic "All I Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten." Another was based on (again my own spin) Barbara Coloroso's Kids Are Worth It (the original 80s edition). I guess, on the one hand, it suggests the task of raising responsible, resourceful, respectful, resilient and compassionate kids is not that difficult. On the other hand, though, it leads us to question the extent of our own responsibility, resourcefulness, respectfulness, resiliency and compassion - doesn't it? After all we can plan to "teach" our children much, but the biggest influence we have is what we model - that is, how we think, act and be in the world.
I would hope overall DOAD and I walk the walk of our talk, but on a day-to-day basis I am sure we fall short. How can we expect of our children [growing minds, bodies, contradictory feeling 'little beings'] what we too often fail to hold ourselves accountable for? I have decided not to send myself crazy with the double-sided chart of 30 parenting gems, but rather to use this exercise as a beginning. Since my almost 5 year old loves numbers, letters, and the yet to be named word for our 'activities' (last year we called whatever we did during the summer as 'summer adventures') I am going to break this quest/task up into several little daily challenges. I will ask him to choose a number or a letter (the other chart contains mostly sentences to live by and/or parent as) and that will be the daily challenge. For example, say B1 chooses "celebrates the successes of self and others." Here we may head to the park for several relay games or other sorts of physical activities where each one will likely come out ahead. The emphasis will be on 'celebrating success.'
Of course, all this time to enjoy these activities is mine only because I am fortunate to have several weeks of holidays from work. I challenge myself to actually be 'on holiday' and really celebrate my children this summer. I had these same "holidays" last year but only took about a week (but that's a story for another time!)