I am thinking today about school and teachers. It is that time of year again.
In truth, we are all teachers of our children. We parents and grand parents are all teachers in the purest sense of the calling. In that sense I am also remembering two important things. We sometimes get worried sick about the mistakes we make on those days when we lose patience, yell, or dig our own heels in. Then, we feel overwhelmed with guilt and fear that we are ruining our children’s life.
By way of reassurance, let us remember that we learn most by what happens within the family every day. Life is filled with moments. Children observe those moments. They build up beliefs about themselves and their world over time. We would be wise to let go of guilt and anxiety and claim our personal joy and strength. It gets us on the path of teaching our values, our faith and helping our children discover their unique talents. We are always teaching. Not just in those special moments of elation or achievement or in the moments when we lose our patience.
Sometimes we think we are teaching when we explain (or lecture?) our children about their misguided behaviors. But that is the least effective learning moments for our children. They learn best from observing our own patterns of behavior and from the natural consequences of their mistakes.
State directly there are two things to remember:
1. We are always teaching by the environment we create in our homes.
2. What we say points the children in one direction but what we do leads them in another direction if different from what we say. (For example , if we teach kindness they notice how we talk about the driver in the other . . .) In the end, they will follow our lead, our patterns etc. It is built into child development to mimic others.
We are our children’s most influential teachers! May we model what we want them to live!