Teach Your Children Well
While almost all of us have our “day jobs”, parents have second job… a bigger job. In today’s busy world, some of us have lost sight of the fact that parenting is actually the highest priority job, the ultimate responsibility. It is one where the pleasures and pains can be immediate and intense but the real assessment of success or failure has a much longer time frame.
When they’re very young, we teach our children the very basic lessons of life. On the whole, I think most parents (especially new ones) pay a lot of attention to this phase of their development. As they grow older and the newness of the experience wears off, some parents start to slack back on their duties. Sometimes, this is reflected in the poor manners the kids exhibit or their unrealistic expectation that their every want and need will be fulfilled immediately (typically the product of poor parental judgment and lack of discipline on their part: the parent has to be the boss and stand strong behind their decisions… which isn’t easy).
As children grow older, many parents don’t teach some very important lessons at all. They rely on “the system” to teach these lessons, if they are taught at all. Lessons ranging from patriotism and pride in their country to household budgeting, from good moral behavior and the respect of property to from being accountable for all their actions to sound financial decision-making, from being an informed and responsible citizen to having great respect for life itself.
The “system” today is largely the public school system… but also includes input from other areas, most predominately the media: TV, radio, internet.
The problem with parents not taking an active role in teaching their children the “more advanced” topics as they grow older is they fail to pass along their own belief system… and rely on others to do the job. Unfortunately, others… teachers, broadcasters, bloggers… don’t necessarily have the same beliefs as the parents. No, they have their own agendas. Parents who surrender the job to others, also give up their influence on their children… and undermine their own beliefs.
Parents must start talking to their children early about why our country is great, why it is important to stay informed and vote wisely, who they should trust and not, where they should look for information, and when they should have the courage to stand behind their own beliefs rather than follow the misguided direction of others. Parents should get their family involved in how to manage money, pay bills, understand credit, and how to save. From practical to theoretical, these are areas where you cannot delegate the tasks and expect to get the same results as when you do the job yourselves. Some lessons are best taught from inside the family, not outside it.
Take responsibility for guiding your family on the right path into the future.
