Now this is a question for everyone to take up, carry with them and consider, especially if you are concerned about the future. Your children (collective) are the future, the only future.
Sometimes when the word "everyone" is used people disconnect, so let me explain this word. The “big three” are teachers, parents, leaders * – in that order. Followed by the makers of games and entertainment, older children and teenagers, and community citizens. A community citizen is anyone who is a part of a community and feels responsible to be a member. Older children and teenagers teach younger children all the time.
Everyone lives one or two degrees of separation from a child or children. Everyone was a child. So this makes it easy for everyone to participate in the question “What are you teaching your children?” Now this is a very different question to ponder than “What should we teach our children” this is not the question for today.
The future is a common topic for most leaders and for news editors. Yet children are not a common topic. War is a common topic. War shapes the future for generations. This is because you cannot make war and not harm the children. Children are connected to everything. If you harm a parent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, friends, destroy a home, destroy a village or community – the children are harmed.
So what are you teaching your children? This question asks, "What are you teaching their minds, their hearts, and their spirits?" What are you teaching them about what is “natural?”
Children cannot be divided up. They are whole and they experience the whole. Consider these four overlapping fields of energy in a child’s life: 1) home, 2) school, 3) children around children, and 4) community. For example, if one of these fields teaches a child to solve problems through violence, meanness or using fear – the other fields must not be silent and offer nothing. All three fields must respond and offer and teach non-violent ways to respond to differences.
The use of fear, as expressed in embarrassment, loss of approval, exclusion, emotional or physical harm – to control shape or direct a child is deeply harmful to growth, to a child developing her voice and discovering her gift.
Consider these practices:
1. Notice and listen. As you walk through all the parts of your day hold the question what are we teaching our children? Notice and listen to all the experiences you have and ask what is this experience teaching children?
2. Elect your leaders based on how rich their relationship is with children of their communities. Do they bring children forward in all that they do, in how they make decisions? Do they practice a path of non-violence?
3. Find those in your community that are concerned with the question – what are we teaching our children? Enter into a true dialogue with them, listen, exchange and invite others into the dialogue.
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