Teaching

“Don’t worry that children never listen to you.  Worry that they are always watching you.” –Robert Fulghum

 

Teaching our children is our most important work we do in life.  When my girls were young, I was focused on teaching them good values and morals. Then as they grew older I focused on teaching them the value of hard work and having a good work ethic and goals. Now that they are adults I am realizing that I need to focus my teaching efforts on how to become self-reliant in everything we do.  It’s funny because I used to teach parenting on a regular basis and I love doing it. But somehow when it’s time to teach my own children it becomes a much harder endeavor.  Maybe it’s because my girls see me as Mom rather than a teacher so I must find ways to get them to see me in a different light rather than having them see me as “just Mom”.

 

I want so much to teach my daughters everything that I learned over the years as a mother so they don’t make the same mistakes I did because I want them to be able to learn from my mistakes and benefit from my experiences.  Teaching them all of that is going to take time and I am going to have to be patient, which is not my strongest suite.  But passing on my knowledge to my girls is that irrevocable gift I can give them and I know it is the most important thing I can do for them now.

 

A few thoughts I have on things we should teach our children are:

 

Tell your kids where you came from – share your story of how you decided what to go into, what ideas you had, what mistakes and failures you had along the way. Don’t let your kids think you were successful and brilliant from the get-go, because that just isn’t true. Let them know how you stumbled along the way so they realize that what you achieved isn’t unreachable for them.

 

Explain to your kids the different types of careers that are out there and what the day to day of those careers will look like.  So many of our kids today have no idea what careers exist in each field.  If you ask a child if they want to go into marketing they would have idea about the actual jobs that exist within the field of marketing, such as graphic artist, copywriter, editor, creative director, etc.  Explain real world jobs to them so the kids can gain an understanding of what options exist out there.

 

Find ways to give your kids hands on experience. The more they can do a task firsthand the more they can determine if they are good at it and if it something they want to pursue.  Just reading about or hearing about jobs doesn’t give them a true idea if it is something they are interested in. 

 

Most important, set the example of hard work by your own behavior. Kids watch us more than we realize so make sure that what they are seeing is a reflection of something you are proud to pass on to them. “Give An Irrevocable Gift to the next Generation” Ernie Fleltcher 

 

Con amor,

Vero