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The following is an excerpt from an article I’ve written to get the conversation going. Please feel free to respond with feedback and other ideas to editor@bleepingherald.com or post your feedback at the Global Intelligence Press Forums.
Parenting for Peace
How can we expect our children to grow up and create the kind of peaceful world we’d like them to live in if we don’t give them both the vision and the skills to do it? We’ve been raising generations of children to become good consumers and better workers, but they’re turning out to be consumers and workers without spirit or soul. Now, more than ever before, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to support our children in their emotional and spiritual growth to become the leaders needed to bring our world to the future they deserve.
Perhaps part of that is taking a long hard look at what we call education. We are focused on more and more education at earlier and earlier stages. But maybe it’s us – the parents - who need the educating. As Micheal Mendizza, co-author of Magical Parent Magical Child with Joseph Chilton Pearce points out, “ Mention parenting or early childhood education and people naturally think about children. Children don't need early childhood education. Parenting is about adults. We hear the words "parenting is about adults," nod our heads up and down but deep down we know it's really about kids. This prejudice is blinding.”
As adults we may be blind to the obvious, but it’s our children who are paying the price. Values are learned by experience and by what children see, not only in their own homes but in the world they live in. All one has to do is turn on the nightly news to see that the “grown ups” aren’t ‘getting it’ in the values department either. How can we with our sole focus bent on consumerism, competition, and getting ahead? As far as values are concerned, we have become more of a “do as I say not as I do” society.
So what are our children to do? Without a real commitment to shift our adult values, how can we teach them? And without a shift, how will real and necessary change in this world occur? “We want our kids to be happy, successful, secure, productive, engaged participants in the social web called life,” says Mendizza, “In order to develop these qualities in children we have to experience and express them ourselves. We need to model all the great things we want for our children. That means you and I must be healthy, sane, intelligent, creative, happy, successful, secure, productive, engaged participants in the social web called life.”
More important than our kids keeping up with standardization tests and learning the “The Three R’s,” is us parents developing our inner strength and values and then teaching our children perspectives and attitudes that will enable them to get along with others, resolve conflict without wars, and be cooperative members of a global society. We need to practice ourselves, and thus, by example, teach our children “The Four C’s” – consciousness, caring, compassion, and conflict resolution. Not to mention respect for self and others, kindness, and service.
Studies indicate that 95% of what a child learns occurs via direct experience during the course of everyday life. The rest is what they pick up from school. So who are the greatest models for children every day? Who do our young children idolize and desire to emulate most? Us - mom and dad. “Think of King Midas and the golden touch,” says Mendizzaa. “Every child we relate to is uplifted and inspired or dragged down by our positive or negative state when we touch them. How we do things is much more important, at least for children, than what we do.”
So I guess that Mahatma Gandhi really did have it right when he said, we must “Be the change that you want to see.” Every parent has a story about some time when their child copied a behavior from them that they wished they hadn’t, and I can certainly think of a few with my daughter! So we’re not perfect and we probably never will be. But I believe if we can strive to live together in respect, and be healthy, engaged participants in the ‘social web called life’, that we can achieve a greater consciousness for ourselves and ultimately our children.
Suggested reading: Magical Parent – Magical Child – by Joeseph Chilton Pearce and Michael Mendizza. Featured in this article: Excerpts from the essay “Kids are Not The Problem” by Michael Mendizza. Read the entire essay at www.nurturing.us.
Michael Mendizza is the founder of Touch the Future, a nonprofit learning design center, and producer of The Nurturing Project, a community based, systems approach to the mentoring and support of parents and the people who care for their children.
