The next room along the mansion’s hallway houses perhaps the greatest wealth in the world. The riches lining the walls here “introduce us to people and places we wouldn’t ordinarily know.” They are “a gateway into a broader world of wonder, of beauty, of delight and adventure… .” They bring us “experiences that make us grow, that add something to our inner stature… .”[1]
A desk, a pencil, a notebook, and mahogany shelves filled with books wait for someone. Your child? On the desk is a piece of blank paper. The paper is a symbol of a child’s mind, waiting to be filled. “… a young child, a fresh, uncluttered mind, a world before him—to what treasure will you lead him? With what will you furnish his spirit?”[2]
There were so many things I wanted to teach my children, yet before and while I taught them, I had to learn. I had to learn their interests and talents, their temperaments and uniqueness.
Know Your Child
If you doubt the importance of knowing your kids, here’s a story that may help you understand what teaching a child without knowing him can do.
Tommy hurried to his seat in the morning kindergarten class. He clutched his school box, for in it lay his favorite of all toys: crayons and paper. Tommy loved to draw. He could draw birds, houses, trees, and even people.
His teacher smiled. “Take out your crayons and paper. Today we’re going to draw flowers.”
Oh, good, thought Tommy. I love to draw flowers. Tommy reached for a red crayon and began to draw a rose.
“Tommy.” The teacher stood beside his desk. “Not that way. Turn over your paper and draw the way I show you on the board.”
So Tommy picked up the pink crayon, as the teacher said, and drew a flower, just as the teacher did.
A year later, Tommy hurries into another school in another town.
Today his new teacher smiles and says, “Class, today we’re going to draw. Take out your crayons and paper.”
Tommy does as the teacher says. He doesn’t like to draw much anymore. He sits and waits for the teacher to continue.
The teacher stops at his desk. “Tommy.” She kneels down beside him. “Is something the matter? Why haven’t you started your drawing?”
“I can’t draw it by myself. I’m waiting for you to show me how.”
Tommy’s first teacher kept her class in order. She taught her students to mimic her instead of allowing them to develop their individual talents. As a result, Tommy lost his fresh, creative freedom. Will he ever get it back? Will he be the one, when older, to say, “I never could draw a straight line”?
What a tragedy when children are pushed and shoved, however well meant, into a shape that is a parent’s or teacher’s instead of being allowed to grow into the shape that is theirs alone.
Take a few minutes—right now if you want. I can wait. Find out:
Those are just a few questions to help you get started. Find out as much as you can about your children. Know them and the unique personalities that go into making them the special children who have been entrusted into your care.
Creative Mothering
Besides coming to know my children, one of the challenges of being a mother was trying to offer a full supply of “things to do when there was nothing to do” and at the same time provide tools for learning.
Kids today live in a fast-paced society. In order to compete with all the world has to offer, we’ll need to use our imaginations to come up with interesting, exciting options.
What all of us mothers love to hear (and always during the busiest part of the day) is, “Mom, what’s there to do? I’m bored.”
One mother I know developed a “things to do” jar. This is an extension of the famous job jar created to entice husbands off the couch and into the fix-it realm.
You might want to develop two jars—one for projects requiring little or no supervision on Mom’s part, and another requiring family participation. The jars may contain hundreds of creative ideas such as:
Read to Your Children
Make it a point to read to your children every day. This serves several purposes. It assures that you spend time with them each day. It gives them a love and respect for books. Reading teaches and helps children develop a desire to learn more. Through books children can enter into exciting adventures and at the same time learn important principles. One of my favorite children’s books is Bombus the Bumblebee by Elsie Larson (see the suggested reading list). It’s a wonderful book for building and restoring self-esteem.
My children always loved reading, and I know it was be-cause I read to them. Now, as a grandmother, I write stories as well. I write a series, the Jennie McGrady Mysteries, for children as young as ten and as old as eighty-two. One of my greatest joys is discovering that a teacher or parent has been reading the series to their kids. Teachers and parents often use mysteries and adventure books in the classrooms and at home to stimulate and encourage kids to read and also as a springboard to discuss various topics the books might deal with. Mine, for example, deal with issues and problems children face every day in our society: environment, boy-girl relationships, broken homes, guns and kids, and prejudice, to name a few.
Having a history as a pediatric nurse and counselor, I care very much about children. In writing my books, I want to give them a good story, but I also want them to develop the ability to cope with their own situations and to learn to solve problems. I want to empower them with survival skills and teach them the clear difference between right and wrong.
Their own feelings are validated through the characters they read about. Kids tell me my characters are very real. They laugh, they hurt, they cry, they become angry. They don’t always get along with their parents. They are not perfect, which endears them to kids of all ages. Like many authors of children’s books, I have set certain standards and will not use gratuitous sex, violence, or obscene language. I firmly believe in the old adage “garbage in—garbage out.”
Kids are enchanted by stories. Why not take advantage of their love of adventure and put books in their hands that will also have redeeming value?
Not all authors pay attention to how their writing affects children, so you’ll want to be careful in your book selections and be certain they meet the criteria you have set for your children. I recently purchased a book for my nephew and ended up not giving it to him because the main character (the hero) had casually stolen a bike and suffered no consequences for his actions.
Some pulp fiction for kids exists simply as hype to earn the author and publisher a lot of money. At an author reception in New York editors of kids’ mysteries were asked to tell about their publishing houses and what types of books they produced. My editor said she wanted books with integrity: “We want books that will uplift, encourage, and entertain kids as well as adults.”
After she spoke, the editor for a publishing house that develops a popular horror book series said, “Our books have absolutely no redeeming value.” He laughed and added, “But they make us a lot of money.”
Sadly, many children are for the most part nonreaders. I’d like to change that, and if you are an avid reader, chances are you would too. Rather than invest in video games or software, I buy my nephews, nieces, and grandchildren books. I want to continue the reading tradition, not only because I write but because of the enjoyment and education reading can bring.
I recently saw an ad in a newspaper picturing a guy sitting on top of a mountain of broken-down computer parts. One might think he’d be depressed, or downtrodden, but on his face was a look of pure pleasure. Why? He had rediscovered books. Books are low-cost, low-maintenance gifts that require no batteries or electrical outlets.
All kids need to operate books is an imagination and the ability to read. And, of course, moms and dads who will steer them in the right direction.
Today, to promote literacy among the younger generation, I encourage hundreds of children to read and write by doing book talks and teaching classes on developing intriguing characters and plots. Many authors are willing to visit schools and libraries to promote literacy and to encourage children in the art of reading and writing.
Build a Library of Good Books
If you enjoy reading to your children, you’ll want to have a variety of books on hand. My children developed their own libraries early on and still place great value on their collections of classics. In fact, those same books are being passed down to their children.
You’ll find the titles of several books that keep giving—even when the covers are closed—in the suggested reading list at the back of this book.
Being a creative mother takes time, but it will be worth the effort when, as your children get older, you hear them reminisce with smiles in their voices:
“We used to …”
“I’ll never forget …”
“Remember when …”
“That was the best time I ever had.”
You will not be the only one who teaches your child. Yet, it is your responsibility to monitor what material he or she learns. While we can’t control everything that goes into our children’s minds, we can have some input.
If you enroll your child in day care or preschool, public, or even private schools, you’ll want to check out the teachers and the curriculum. The more hours your child spends in an institution, the more important your input. You may even decide to keep your child out of learning institutions completely.
Who Will Educate Your Child?
Proverbs 22:6 KJV tells us, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
They are wise words and could be comforting ones—if we were indeed training our children. Unfortunately, most of the training of children these days is not done by parents. It is done by schools, television, and peers.
Exposing our children to experiences outside the family and home can be beneficial, as long as we oversee the experience. But too often our children are taught the opposite of what we believe in situations where parents are losing control.
Many parents today have sought and found a solution to this dilemma by educating their children at home or in a setting in which they maintain a greater control over what the child learns.
Home schooling is becoming more and more popular as concern over public schools grows. The articles on home schooling are impressive. I’ll admit I was skeptical at first. I remember sending my kids off to school with a huge sigh of relief. Alone … I had time alone. I didn’t know about home schooling then, and I might have rejected it at first as an ugly demon trying to devour my few hours of peace.
Home schooling may not be the time-consuming thing many parents fear. Parents do not have to incorporate four to six hours of teaching a day into their already overloaded lives. In fact Dr. Raymond Moore, Ed.D., developmental psychologist and founder of the Hewitt Foundation, said this: “If a mother or father formally instructs sixty to ninety minutes daily and spends a like period supervising study, the average child will excel classroom children.”[3]
I have spoken with many parents who have chosen to educate their children at home. The results have been very positive. One woman said, “At first I thought I would go crazy, but once the children were away from the disruptive influence of the classroom and we established a routine, their behavior improved and so did their concentration and ability to learn.”
One of the primary problems I see in the public schools is a lack of moral integrity. As one teacher told me, “Teachers are not allowed to teach religion or morality because they can’t risk offending anyone.” In addition, the academic standard has declined seriously over the years and students in public schools in the United States score consistently low.
We often hear about the lack of safety in schools due to weapons and drug use. In many schools children are having to pass through metal detectors as they enter the doors of the building.
I could go on to list more problems, but you probably have a list of your own.
Margaret Mead once said, “My grandmother wanted me to get an education so she kept me out of school.” An interesting theory and one with which many parents today fully agree.
Some of you may choose to send your children to a private school; some may choose home schooling. Many of you, however, may not have the time or funding for either and must utilize the public school system. However your children receive their formal education, you will want to oversee their curriculum. Keep in close contact with your child’s teacher. If by chance you are unhappy with that teacher, ask that your child be transferred. While there are some poor teachers, there are also many excellent, dedicated teachers who share your value system. Research the schools in your area. Even if your children go to a public school, you are ultimately responsible for their education. As a taxpayer, you have a say about how the public schools in your area are run. Why not exercise that right?
Garbage In—Garbage Out
In an earlier segment I mentioned the term “garbage in—garbage out.” This is a term often used by computer people. It simply means your computer will only be as good as the components and software you put in it. In a real sense, this principle applies to human minds. For people, though, there is also the element of subliminal suggestion. Advertisers use this method to urge us to buy their products. How many of you get thirsty or hungry watching advertisements for colas and hamburgers? Here’s a story to illustrate my point.
Ann’s son, Chris, went to the library and checked out Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. He read for a while every day. And every day he’d beg for a candy bar. The more time he spent reading his book about sweets, the more he craved sweets.
Ann realized that her son was being influenced by the power of suggestion. We can apply the same principle to other types of books or videos, television or movies that might be more harmful. If we allow a child to dwell on violence in books or on-screen, there is a good chance he or she will begin to crave more. Tragically, a craving for guns and explosives turned a fifteen-year-old student from Springfield, Oregon, into a cold-blooded murderer. He gunned down his parents, then went to his school and opened fire in a cafeteria, killing two students and injuring twenty-five. Perhaps the greatest shock is that this type of violent activity is on the increase.
Eventually what is fed into our minds on a regular basis comes out in actions.
Ann stressed to her son the importance of filling his mind with information that would produce worthwhile and acceptable actions. It may not be a bad idea to print the words, “GARBAGE IN—GARBAGE OUT” on a large poster paper and affix it to a conspicuous place in your child’s room or study area.
Carefully consider what is going into your child’s brain. Weed out as much of the harmful influence as possible. Perhaps it is nothing. Perhaps I am an alarmist, but I can’t help but wonder if those seemingly harmless video games with cartoon characters chasing each other, throwing barrels and bombs at bad guys might not be fertile ground for real guns and bombs and violence in the future.
Show-and-Tell
As our children are growing up there are many principles we want to teach them. Concepts are often difficult to teach since a child’s attention span is short and they’d rather be having fun than listening to words. Sometimes we need to use a method employed by educators called show-and-tell. First show the child with the use of a story or, better yet, a real-life illustration, then tell him or her. Let me illustrate.
Say you wanted to teach your child the valuable lesson of unselfishness. You could just tell him or her to share or try to explain the concept of putting others first, but would he or she understand?
Or, you could tell him a story like this, which was handed down by Wilma, a white-haired grandmother and very experienced mother.
How exciting! A mother bird had laid two tiny eggs in a nest almost hidden among the leaves of the tall rosebush that shaded my parents’ bedroom window. As a small girl I watched with interest as the days passed. Finally, I saw two wide-open mouths begging for food when their mother was startled into flight.
Almost every day I stopped by the nest after school to visit my new little feathered friends. But one day, to my horror, the sprinkler was trained directly on the rosebush. “Daddy, Daddy!” I cried. “Please turn off the water … the birds.”
My dad turned off the water and we went to check the bird family. The father bird fluttered frantically from branch to branch in a nearby tree. The mother sat on the nest, her tiny head drooping, her feathers soaked.
I gently lifted her lifeless body from the nest. As I did, two hungry babes opened their mouths for food. It was the ultimate act of unselfishness. That the mother bird had given her life to protect her babies. It reminds me of how Jesus gave His life for me on Calvary.
We couldn’t save the baby birds, so I placed them with their mother in a softly lined matchbox and gave them a proper burial. A small wooden cross marked the site in Mama’s garden.
You see how much a story can add to your teaching? Watch for happenings in and around your home that illustrate the principles you want to teach your child.
There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of concepts I wanted my children to learn, but few are as important as these next two. The first is how to handle the inequities life hands us.
Justice Smushtice
In rearing our children, we moms usually try to be fair. However, mothers will be wise not to take the children’s idea of fairness too seriously.
I’m not going to try to balance the scales of justice here—on the contrary. I want to point out the injustices.
Life isn’t fair. It never has been and it never will be. We are all dished out problems in different portions. In fact, life can be downright hard. And the sooner we learn that fact the better we’ll be able to handle life and grow beyond our problems.
I made the mistake of trying to be fair with my kids. Always giving equal amounts of dessert. If I took one to the zoo, I made it a point to take the other one. If I bought a sweater for one, I’d have to buy something of equal value for the other. It eventually became a frustrating battle, because no matter how fair I tried to be, I would often hear those endearing words: “Mom, that’s not fair—Caryl got more cake than me.”
I suppose to minimize sibling rivalry, a mother must try to be fair to some extent, but … there is a limit. And whether we like it or not, something always comes along to tip the scales.
For instance, one child may receive infinitely more scolding than another, simply because he or she insists on learning the hard way or acting out to gain more of your attention. Would it be fair to punish the other child? Of course not.
Rewards and punishments can be directly related to our behavior, but then again, they may not be. Suppose eleven-year-old Cassandra spends an hour a day trying to learn her math skills. Joshua, on the other hand, breezes through a fifteen-minute session and seems bored. On a test at the end of the week, Joshua makes an A while Cassandra drags in with a D. Is that fair?
Is it fair that Randy scores more baskets than Ken? They’re both the same height and age. Why can’t things be equal?
Who knows? The one thing I do know is that if we keep playing the “life isn’t fair” game, we’ll just end up miserable. If life keeps tossing you foul balls, there’s not much more you can do but to keep swinging. One of these days you’ll connect.
Children who learn early to handle and solve problems will be much stronger and capable of surviving in this “unfair” world, than those who were allowed to believe they should receive their fair share.
As I said, life is full of problems. We can teach our children to handle those problems in two different ways. Either we show them how to moan and groan about problems while they multiply, or we teach them the art of problem solving.
The Problem with Earl
In his book The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck writes, “Once we truly know that life is difficult—once we truly understand and accept it—then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”[4]
One day several years ago, my children came running into the house with a problem. It seems a baby squirrel (herein referred to as Earl) had fallen out of his nest, which was located in the upper regions of our tallest fir tree.
What could we do? The first step in problem solving is to accept the fact that you have a problem. Now, I could have turned my back on Earl, but that would have given me bigger problems: (1) how to explain my apathy to the kids; (2) how and where to bury a dead squirrel; and (3) how to deal with guilt.
So, I faced the problem head-on. Now for step two—what could we do with this ball of fuzz with a tail? This step meant brainstorming for possible solutions.
“We could put it back in the nest,” David, then ten, advised.
“It’s too high,” I said.
“I can climb it.” He raced away and began to shinny up the rough bark.
“Get down from there!” I yelled.
“I can do it.”
“All right,” I warned. “But if you fall and break your leg, don’t come running to me.”
“Why can’t we keep him?” Caryl stroked Earl’s quivering head.
“Because he’s wild, and he’d be happier with his mommy,” I said. Then I remembered reading that many animals reject their young if the human scent is on them. “Besides, I don’t know what baby squirrels eat.”
“How about milk?” injected David, who had given up on his climb.
We brought a small bowl of warm milk and set it in front of Earl. Earl’s tiny body shook like Jell-O in an earthquake, but he didn’t drink. I put his mouth into the warm liquid. His pink tongue darted out to lick the milk off his chin.
“Maybe he could drink from my doll’s baby bottle,” Caryl suggested. We tried, but the nipple was too big.
“I know,” I said. “We could try a dropper.” I hurried into the house to find one. Earl sucked hungrily from the dropper and the eating problem was solved.
Step three was to choose an option and implement it. Earl stayed.
I know you’re dying to know what happened to Earl, so I’ll finish the story. Earl grew up to be a beautiful, healthy, bushy-tailed gray squirrel. We brought him nuts to hide before his first winter, and he went crazy storing them all over the yard and house.
Earl was like any ordinary squirrel except for the fact that he climbed people as if they were trees and made a nest in our garage. Earl left us one day and I’m afraid it was my fault. He and I got into a fight over a marshmallow. I know it sounds petty, but as a mother, I didn’t think marshmallows were good for squirrels. Earl had other ideas and protested by sinking his front teeth into my forefinger.
I’d have forgiven him, but Earl apparently decided to give us up to raise his own family. We’d seen it coming even before the marshmallow incident. Earl had a girl. We lost track of him soon after that. Seems some neighbor chased him off, thinking any wild squirrel that would run straight up a man’s pant leg had to be crazy or rabid.
Earl is long gone now, but we’ll never forget him. In the backyard where he once buried an acorn, an oak tree lives and grows.
You may want to analyze problems of a more serious or complex nature on paper rather than in your head.
Teach Your Children Well
If our children are blank pages upon which we write their future, then we must carefully consider what we want to write.
Before we begin, we realize that the paper isn’t quite blank, for God has already begun work in them. Our children are born with some natural abilities and gifts—it is our job to enhance those abilities and learn of those gifts.
I wanted to teach my children well. I wanted them to be successful, well-rounded, responsible adults. Maybe I could write the word success across the page in bright, bold letters.
But how do you spell success? Some mothers have been known to spell it m-o-n-e-y. Others spell it d-r-e-a-m-s. I suppose all moms secretly desire financial comfort and career fulfillment for their children. Most of us wish our children would find the dream we have for them.
One day when my son was about seven, I noticed him playing doctor with his toy doctor kit. With plastic-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he listened to his giant stuffed turtle’s heart through the play stethoscope. I envisioned him in a black robe at graduation, having earned a medical degree from Harvard or Yale.
Success dreams for other mothers may include a new car every year and a home in the hills, with a maid. My son the doctor, my daughter the lawyer—those are success stories I may never see.
What I do see is the most important measure of success in my children. My kids’ success isn’t spelled m-o-n-e-y. They don’t have a lot of that yet.
But they do have hearts for helping others. They have a love for God. This is what I call success.
I guess if I had to write one word across my page it would be success spelled s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n.