As a teacher, I have been thinking a lot lately about what I
taught my own children. Did I ever intentionally teach them something? Or did
they learn from my actions which could have been good or bad? Did I assume they
would just know something without ever giving them the information to learn? There
are times I wish I could go back and do a better job at raising my children. They
are wonderful, but I can’t take a lot of the credit for that.
When our children where from 3-5, I did a preschool program
with them called Joy
School. Joy School
is a program started by Richard and Linda Eyre that gives you the information
to teach lessons on the joy of service, the joy of creativity, the joy of spontaneous
delight, the joy of trust, etc. There are a few things that I know I intentionally
taught my children due to Joy
School or because they
were important enough in my mind to cover like my lesson on respecting personal
property. (Ask me about that sometime. It was effective!)
There are also many things I did not teach well. Take the
handling of money for example. It was common in our family to use phrases like ‘money
burns a whole in your pocket’ or ‘we can’t afford that.’ Unfortunately we said
those instead of teaching our children to make a plan of how to earn and save
money so they could obtain something. Another
example of this would be gathering the family to make plans for a vacation and then
shooting down the ideas because they cost too much. This teaches children a negative
attitude toward money. I know for us as parents, we sometimes would have
disagreements about money or have problems with the checkbook that were minor
but appeared to be major to the listening child.
We may want our children to be reverent in church and expect
it from them, but have we taught them what that looks like? Are we playing on
our iPhone but expecting them to be quiet? I had a friend that taught her children by having reverent time at home. They would sit on a chair to see how long they could be quiet. The young ones started out with 10 seconds but got excited to try and go longer and do as well as their older siblings. When they went to church they knew what it felt like to sit reverently. If you give a child a car, to keep them 'quiet' at church, they will want to make varooom sounds, they are kids!
Are we teaching values like kindness
and sharing? Or do we wait until a fight breaks out? Are we teaching them how gossip hurts and lying just makes issues
worse? Or do we wait until something happens then say ‘you are in trouble now
for lying!’ Being a parent is hard work and not everything works with every child. Consistency is important.
It is also really important to look for teaching moments
throughout the day, but it is also just as important to intentionally teach
your children the things you feel will give them a great foundation. Don’t
leave that to society, church, or schools or they may not turn out the way you
planned. This applies to chores too. My mother would ask us to dust. I did what
I thought was dusting and she would scold me and then do it herself. She was a
great mom but never showed me how to dust. She never showed me how to cook either! I was one of those kids that needed to be
shown more than once, but she assumed I knew from watching her.
Pick 10 concepts this year that you feel you want your
children to really understand. Then take one a month and work on it with them. Find
examples to point out, stories to read, and talk about the subject over dinner.
Ask for examples your children saw during their day. Reinforce their behavior when they work on the concept.
Intentionally teach; don’t just expect
children to know something.
