Children - Our Most Precious Assets

Children - Our Most Precious Assets

Word Count 1,109

Children are not stupid, many parents are, and some parents shouldn’t be parents at all (they don’t have the commitment). Children learn by example from their experiences. Don’t you think it’s a great tragedy that many of us neglect our children and fail to nurture them properly?

What they become and what they learn is what they get from us by how we teach them, and how we respond to their questions, concerns, and queries. This isn’t just about reading, writing, and arithmetic, but instilling those characteristics in our children that will help them to love and care about others. Understand the consequences of greed, appreciate the importance of education, realize the necessity for ethical behavior, and grow up with an absence of prejudice. Maybe they could learn these things, by example, from their experiences with us.

When I was about 14 years old, my little brother learned a great lesson. He had a habit of running up be hind by father, sticking his lead between his legs, looking up and saying, “Hi Dad, fooled you again.” My father would always act surprised and pretend that my brother had indeed fooled him.

One day my father was standing in front of the toilet, with the bathroom door cracked open, preparing to relieve himself. Just as he started, my brother opened the door, ran up behind him, stuck his head between my Dad’s legs, looked up, and began to speak. As you might guess, my drenched my brother’s head. My brother went crazy, crying and screaming, my dad was laughing so hard he couldn’t stop, or get another drop in the toilet. I was hysterical, and everyone learned a few lessons by example. The least of which . . . even someone that loves you might still piss on your head.

I believe it is parent’s responsibility is to take care of, and protect, their children. It is their responsibility to nurture and encourage the child to want to learn. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children not to hate, or judge by the color of one’s skin, religious preference, or anything else. It should be the responsibility of parents to teach every child to look into the heart of everyone with whom they come in contact, and accept them for who they are, and without judgment.

I think everyone should consider the enormity of the task, and realize that this is a lifetime commitment before they ever decide to have children. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, and it won’t make you a good parent.

I think that helping the child learn begins within a few days after they slip from the womb and lasts for the rest of our lives. It takes understanding and patience to listen to your children with all of your senses. I believe you should see them with more than just your eyes, hear them with more than just your ears, and love them with more than just your voice. You should discipline them with more than just your hand, teach them with more than just books, and cherish them with everything you have.

I don’t think schools should be someone’s own personal day care center. The schools are there to assist us in raising our children; they are not there to raise our children for us. I think parents should become more involved with the schools than they expect the schools to be involved with their children. We need to take the time to find out what is going on with our children, and know how our children are doing.

I don’t think the TV should be the babysitter, and I don’t think video games teach creativity.

When I grew up we had neighborhood football games, baseball games, built forts and constructed huts. We created things and generally had a good time, and played together. Yes, we played with things, each other, and anything could be anything we wanted it to be. Our imagination was the only limiting factor. I remember one of my favorite pastimes was a rousing neighborhood game of kick-the-can. There would be 20 or 30 kids, and the game boundaries would range over four or five house yards. Sometimes the game would last from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM and we would have a tremendous amount of fun. We were never bored.

Our children need to learn to play together, create games, invent their own entertainment, and thereby develop a creative imagination with a sense of cooperation.

We also needed to teach our children to cherish those that love them and love them back, unconditionally, and without judgment.

I don’t believe that hate is hereditary; it is not part of our DNA. However, it is something that is learned from the adults that surround our children. It is insidious. It spreads from child to child in the same way a wild fire spreads in the tinder of a dry forest. It takes away innocence, corrupts kindness, challenges ethics, and destroys selflessness.

I also think that when a child is talking and asking questions, no matter how stupid the questions might seem, the child is thinking and learning. They are trying to understand something that they have somehow been exposed to. They are trying to connect threads of information together. I believe that they are trying to make sense of something.

Their questions should never be demeaned because when you belittle a question you demean the child that asked it. You somehow say, “This is unimportant”. I think that if you make them feel stupid, they eventually believe they are and quite trying. If you don’t know the answer to their question you should not make one up. Parents should admit that they don’t know something. Show the child that learning is as important to you as you would like it to be for the child. Teach them to learn by example. Do you think children can teach you too?

Providing discouragement instead of encouragement is a tragedy. We should never discourage learning because our children are our greatest asset, and our only future.

I have heard it said when children are young they step on your toes, when they become adults, they step on your heart. I find this to be a sad commentary because we didn’t show them a better way. It is what they learned, or didn’t learn, from us. We forgot, or maybe were too lazy, or didn’t pay enough attention to teach, and nurture them in all things positive, and discourage them from all things negative, by our own example.