This morning, my son was eating raisins and I heard him say, "My raisins are making my ears itch." He has a certain grasp for cause and effect, but he does not yet understand that correlation does not equal causation. He argued with me for a little bit when I said, "Your ears itch, but the raisins are not making your ears itch." So I eventually said, "You need to be truthful with yourself. You need to know that raisins do not cause your ears to each. Do not believe a lie. It is important to tell yourself the truth." It made me think back to a conversation I had with an older mentor who told me that - we all need to make sure we do not believe lies and that we do not lie to ourselves. We often focus on "do not lie to others", but we also need to be careful what we tell ourselves.
Another teachable moment today was while my two children were playing together. It's ironic that they were pretending to stand and pray during church services and my daughter refused to let her brother be where he wanted to stand. After talking through it, she admitted she was trying to upset him. So I explained that we do not purposefully act in ways to upset others and we need to choose to be nice and act in ways that are kind.
This brings me to mention the three simple "rules" for my kids. There are other rules of course, but I usually boil problems down into these three to help keep it simple for them. I make them state each out loud: 1) "I will be nice to others"; this can also be stated "I will be kind to others" or "I will not hurt others." 2) "I will be nice to things" and 3) "I will be nice to myself." I learned these from my church camp many years ago. They're succinct and therefore easy to remember.
Those of us who are Bible keeping Christians know that the two greatest commandments we are to keep are to love God and to love others as our self. The 3 rules above fall within those they just help put it in simpler terms for my kids (or anyone). They currently supplement, not replace, those two great commandments.
So when they make each other upset, I have them each say, "I will be nice to others. I will be nice to my sibling," and we talk about it. When they start throwing toys around that are not made for that purpose, I have the one involved say, "I will be nice to things" and we talk about it. We talk about the purpose behind the items and how we are to take care of them and use them properly so they last and so they do not damage the floor and furniture by hitting them with hard objects.
And of course when they want the same thing (even though they have SO many toys to choose from - thank you family and friends for your gifts and hand-me-downs as we've hardly ever bought them any) there are teachable moments about sharing and being kind. We do not want them to have a "me" attitude. We want them to learn that how they treat each other is more important than whether they have an object right now, right when they decide they want it (because the other one has it and it makes it so tempting when someone else has it).
Before becoming a parent I always wondered how to go about teaching children God's ways when I sit in the house and walk by the way and go about daily life. I still wonder if I do it well enough or often enough, but these are some examples of how I teach them, when there are teachable moments.
Singing off...and the greatest of these is love
Gina
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