The great American author, James Arthur Baldwin, once said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
The core of a child’s education is that parents show them how to live life by example. Therefore, instead of thinking about how to teach our children, we need to look at ourselves first, whether we are living our lives the way our children are expected to live or not.
Of course, it is very difficult to show our children what the perfect adult should be all of the time. We make mistakes and do things that we should not do because there is no perfect human being in the world.
However, one thing that is for sure is if we show our children we as their parents are doing our best to be good parents, our children will learn from us and become good adults when they grow up.
What do you remember from when you were child? Perhaps your parents did something that really impressed you and you still remember it to this day?
I have one. When I was young, I grew up in a very rural, small town and my family decided to move to the metropolitan area. The level of education was much higher than what I used. I got the lowest ranking within my class during the first semester. I was so ashamed that I could not let my parents know that I got such a low ranking in the class. Because of this, I decided to change the score report. I altered it to 5th instead of 55th out of the entire 55 students. My parents were very impressed that I could be at the top of the class in new school. They even celebrated my results. They invited the neighbors over for the celebration and they told everyone they knew how good I did in class. They kept praising my efforts and outcome. This has put me into flutter. I felt so nervous because I didn’t want others to find out about my lies. Long story short, I had to live up to what I lied about. I had to study hard and because of this, my score got better in class. After a few months, my score fell between 6th and 10th on average in the class. I was less burdened after that.
Seven years later, I still believed that my parents were not aware of my lies. I ended up telling my mother that I had lied about my score and guess what? She already knew! It turned out that the score card had delivered to my parents a few days after I had shown them the false results, but my parents do not want me to be embarrassed. They also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because I was trying to adjust myself in the new school at that time. They simply pretended that they did not know at all.
When I found this out I was puzzled. I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing for me, and then I realized how hard it would be for them not to tell me immediately and scold me for being a liar. Instead, they just believed me without question. In the end, I had to live up to the expectation that I planted on them, and it made me study harder. I graduated school at top ranks after all.
This experience impressed me so much. It led me to believe in my children unconditionally and made me take a look at the positive side of my children. I try to find out what my children did well and praise them for that specific action. I do not pay much attention on the negative side of things as long as they are not severe. So far, it seems to work great. I see my children do good in school and in kindergarten, and they behave the way I wish them to behave.
This is my story, but I am sure that you will have many stories about what your parents did for you. Please share with us. I would love to hear from you.
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