Giving value to your children. How we choose to raise the future leaders.
Do we actually have a plan to raise our children?
When I raised my children, I chose to educate them at home, because I believed at that time that I could have given them a better education, as a rounded human being, than what was available. I didn’t actually take the time to sit down and work out what it was I actually wanted.
I had a rough idea in my head, how I wanted their education to look, I had a rough idea in my head how I wanted them to grow to be as adults.
I wanted them to be independent people, to know how to live should something have happened to me, I wanted them to be able to know that they could be confident in taking care of themselves.
Thinking about your children, what are the core values that you want to impart into your children.
Do you know, have you even thought about how you want your children to be as they live their lives.
Do you want your children to be happy, and healthy and courageous, and independent.
These are things that, looking back I wanted for my children, I didn’t have a plan on how to make that happen, it was all very willy-nilly, it was all very hit and miss, and more often than not I missed than hit. Because when you don’t have a plan, you don’t know where you’re going. And it’s so easy not to get there.
For healthy children, what is your definition, of a healthy child?
I really had to think about this, it’s like, when you take away the things that we are taught that healthy is, what does healthy mean to you?
And what do healthy children look like, sound like, and be, to you?
One of my definitions is a healthy child is able to think, and they can think for themselves.
A healthy child is able to move, in whatever form that looks like.
A healthy child is somebody that doesn’t have life threatening illnesses.
A healthy child is somebody that is contented emotionally and socially, and as I’m talking, I’m thinking that even with a life threatening illness a child can be happy and they can be content emotionally and socially.
Happy children, this was a little more difficult to define, because happy is an essence, it’s a spirit, it’s the feeling more than it is the concrete perception, or a concrete tangible that you can put your finger on.
For me a happy child is a child that is unburdened with unnecessary cares, their basic needs for love, affection, food and shelter have been taken care of, and they feel secure and a peace within themselves.
A courageous child, is somebody who is able to have the where-with-all inside themselves, the assurance they are okay, that they are worthy, and that they are loved, that they can face the hard times, and a courageous child is somebody who is able to make decisions for themselves and to live into that decision.
It takes courage to make a decision, it takes courage to make a mistake, as parents do we teach our children how to make decisions, how to make mistakes, and how to make them better.
A courageous child knows that they are in charge of themselves.
This is a whole new concept, I didn’t have this concept when I raised my children, it kind of like something that has evolved in my mind.
That treating children as people, versus treating them as chattels or belongings.
Interesting thought.
An independent child is a child who has learned how to trust themselves, they have learned that their decisions, that they can make decisions within the safety of their family, they’re able to go out into the world, which could be school, could be playing with their friends, it could be any number of things.
They have learned that can go out into the world, and know that they will be supported and nurtured when they return home.
School for a child can be just as difficult as going to work is, for an adult.
Often we forget that children are people, they have emotions just like us, if we can teach them how to tap into their emotions and feel them.
They won’t have the back log that adults, some of us have.
It is up to us as adults to be healthy examples of what a child can be.
Often children don’t listen to the words we speak, they listen more to the actions that we take. Everything we do, everything we say and everything that we are as human beings are absorbed into our children.
Have you ever seen a child, who has the demeanor of their mum or their dad? They are not the things the parents deliberately taught the children to be, they are picked up. They are our essence, our way of being. And our children portray that, they are mirrors to the way that we think and the way that we behave.
It is up to create a safe and a loving environment in which they can flourish.
It is up to us to teach our children, who they need to be, so they can navigate their adult life.
Childhood is a place for exploration, it’s a place for learning, loving, and being.
And gaining all the skills they may need as they grow into being adults.
It’s up to us, to teach them how to think independently, how to set their own goals, how to create their own plans to achieve those goals.
how to be happy and how to be healthy.
It’s up to us to teach them about money, it’s up to us to teach them about the world, and we can do that in multiple ways.
