As parents, it comes naturally for us to hope nothing but good things to come to the lives of our children. We have been there in the so called journey of life and whatever we have experienced, positive or otherwise, we see them as a lesson learned of which we want to share to our children. Most often than not, some of these lessons we learned from our parents and we see them as useful in our journey such that we want our children to see the value that these lessons had brought into our lives. The others, we just learned from our past mistakes such that we share them to our children as well to shield them from the agony of its consequence and the pain of regret.
I have two young children ages 13 and 12 by whom I do not tire of giving valuable advices from the time their young minds can already comprehend as I continuously do so today. Parents should never get tired of teaching their children. There may actually be a time when children seem not to listen to us, but we shouldn’t see this as a reason to stop teaching or advising them altogether. We just keep on advising them no matter what. Somehow, it will register to their subconscious. It is worth sharing how these simple advices can actually make a difference from their life and mine.
1. Be honest, someone up there is watching. Earlier on, this is the very basic thing that I advised to my two boys. The saying that “honesty is the best policy” might be too overused nowadays already in this age of deceit and lie driven-world, but I tell you, it still is an amazing trait to be honest despite it being a rarity already. Being honest saves us from a whole lot of trouble. When we fail in raising honest kids, it somehow reflects it unto us such that all other values and virtues seem hardly achievable if our kids are in trouble with being dishonest. Start instilling this to your children while still very young and it just comes naturally that they turn out to be honest kids that we hopefully continues until their lifetime. It is something I have achieved from my own children, a virtue I have toiled to instill to them with all my might.
2. Do not do unto others, what you do not want the others will do to you. True to its guiding principle, this one is really the golden rule to reckon with. It really needs a constant and continuous prodding from us parents for our children to see the value of this particular rule. This being biblical in nature while particularly relevant in today’s world, makes it more a truly guiding light in our relationship among people we deal with as we journey through life.
3. Everything can be settled through peaceful talk. This one is actually my personal mantra which turned to become my personal golden rule. I only learned a little later how useful is this when I applied it to my own circumstances by which I truly believe this can guarantee one to be saved from huge trouble. In here, arrogance and pride has no place at all. Do not attack pride with pride and arrogance with arrogance. It takes only a simple humility and honesty to discuss matters between people.
4. Take time to pray. All of these in this world amount to nothing when you have no personal relationship with our Maker. I mean ALL, and there is no compromise on that.
5. Be the best of what you can be. To have a purpose-driven life. To believe that each one of us has a purpose and that we need only to cultivate and discern what our purpose in this journey is called life. And whatever it is that our journey leads us to, we just try as hard as we can to be good at it given our God-given talents.
It is amazing how as parents, the shaping of our children’s values and virtues depends mightily upon us. While they may have acquired their own set of values and virtues along the way, the ones that we instill to them especially during the early part of their lives are the ones that truly take roots on them. We should be more particular in taking advantage of that fact.
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