Three Things to Teach Your Children

salamanderroom
When I say “your” children I don’t mean just your biological children, but rather all the young people that you have contact with — students, recruits, the children of friends. I believe that part of the reason for the dissociation of so many young people today is the fact that we don’t talk with them. We wait for them to ask us questions (having forgotten what it feels like to be in their shoes), or to screw up, so we can tell them, too late, what not to do. It is as if we consider it presumptuous to talk with them, as if we’re so ashamed of what we know and believe, and how little we have learned, that it would be of no value to them (or at least, they wouldn’t consider it of any value). Or perhaps our confidence has been so shattered by how little (and how poorly) we feel our own parents and elders taught us, that we’ve become to timid to even try. Some of us are so unpracticed at it that we’re probably afraid to talk with young people. We wouldn’t be the first generation to feel that, but it’s still a shame. We are leaving them an incredibly fucked-up world, and we owe them at least an explanation, a few pointers, some rules of thumb.

I have resolved to teach three things to the young people I am privileged to have the opportunity to speak with, and perhaps influence a little.

The first thing I will teach them, and perhaps the most important, is my biggest mistakes. As any improv expert will tell you, there is nothing as disarming as disarming yourself, telling some self-deprecating stories, making an unforced confession. Most of us are terrified of doing this (with anyone — employees, family, friends, let alone young people we think we are supposed to be some kind of role models for). Won’t they think less of us, distrust us, find us unreliable, turn away, if we tell them what we have done wrong? My experience has been the opposite. Even on this blog when I get self-critical it seems to endear me to readers more than scaring them away.

I’m not going to tell you, or any young acquaintances, my biggest mistakes in a list (it is a long list). That’s not the best way to teach anyone how to avoid those mistakes themselves. The best way is always by a story. It doesn’t even have to be in the first person, if that’s too embarrassing. My story about the mistakes I’ve made in my marriage was written as fiction, though readers who know me well saw right through it. My story about finally discovering what knowledge management was about (after wasting a lot of time and money doing the wrong thing) takes a half-hour to tell, and parts of it are pretty funny (humour always makes a story better, even if it’s a tragedy). If you’re no good at telling stories, it’s never too late to learn.

Why teach young people my mistakes? Not so much so they’ll avoid them (have you ever really learned from other people’s mistakes?) It’s more so they know it’s OK to make mistakes, that you survive them, that that’s how you learn yourself, that they make you stronger.

The second thing I will teach them are the critical life skills they don’t learn in school:
CriticalLifeSkills
I don’t really understand why these skills are not taught during all those interminable boring school days we force children to endure indoors, shut away from the real world. There are lots of theories, from a conspiracy to make us all dependent on the corporatist state, to a dearth of competencies in teaching these skills even if there were a will to do so.

But these skills are much better learned hands-on than in classrooms anyway. You don’t shove an article in front of someone and say “Here, read this, it will teach you how to think critically”. These are skills learned by practice. That entails going out and doing something with young people. How often do we do that? Is the aversion of the young to doing things with the old the result of experienced learning, or a fear of the unknown? If the idea of doing this is a little unnerving, if you’re feeling a bit rusty at intergenerational experiences of any kind, you’re far from alone. Use your imagination in picking the experience, and I’ll bet you the young people you share it with will still be talking about it twenty years later.

The third things I will teach them, and the least important of the three, is advice on how to live their lives. It is the least important because no one follows anyone else’s advice. Its purpose is not to instruct, but to show you care, which is even more important. And again, the best way to provide this advice is through stories. Here is some of the advice I will craft into stories to tell to my grand-daughters, and any other young people I can get to listen:

  • Learn as much as you can, especially skills that are useful, that make you independent and self-sufficient.
  • Love yourself. Give yourself time, space and permission to become your true authentic self. Ignore critics. Don’t be down on yourself for things you can’t control. Don’t judge yourself by others’ standards, or vice versa.
  • Even if it takes a lifetime, strive to find work that you love, and that you do better than anyone else — the work that is needed that you were meant to do. Settle for nothing less.
  • Don’t look for utopia. It doesn’t exist. You will know your place when you find it. It won’t be perfect, but it will be home. Open yourself to it, your senses, your instincts, and connect with all the life in it. Let it teach you to be part of the whole.
  • Love others without limit, without condition, without reservation. You will only be loved as much as you love others.
  • Don’t plan too much, or too far ahead. 
  • Do something, every day, to make the world a better place. It doesn’t have to be big. Help someone. Say “thank you”. Tell someone you love them.
  • Never let urgent things get in the way of your doing what’s important.

OK, that’s pretty simple, right? What’s missing? And why, if it’s so obvious and so important, aren’t we doing it?

Top illustration from the award-winning children’s book  The Salamander Room written by Anne Mazer and illustrated by Steve Johnson

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8 Responses to Three Things to Teach Your Children

  1. Meg says:

    Ah, see, this is something I’ll respond to once I’ve given it some more thought. The vast majority of my late teens and twenties was spent working with people 5, 10, or 15 years younger than I am, specifically within the capacity of mentoring and leadership.This was my whole life!Thank you for making people think about how crucial the need for connection with young people really is…

  2. Vednis says:

    What’s missing? Tough question. This may help:”Trust Children. Nothing could be more simple, or more difficult. Difficult because to trust children we must first learn to trust ourselves, and most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” — John Holt, How Children Learn

  3. Rayne says:

    What’s missing: simply being with them, in the moment. They have as much to teach us as we have to teach them. There is living to do in simply being with them — snowballs to throw, cookies to bake and eat, digging in mud and planting seeds and picking tomatoes together. They see and hear things that we’ve forgotten, will point them out willingly if we are with them, let them push bottom-up if we are not over-intent on top-down experience. Children are robbed in Western culture of their childhood, too; in being with them, we see how much they acquire on their own, without being overscheduled and overbooked.By the way, congrats on your Koufax nomination, Dave! Keep up the great work!

  4. Mariella says:

    I would add too things : On one hand, whenever needed to call their attention for something they are doing wrong…. always do it respectfully, reflexively and in private….. and in the other hand, refered to competitivity and social relations, I´ll use the same words i use with my children…… : Strawberries are little plants giving sweet fruit, oaks are big trees giving shelter and fresh shadow, “ortigas” are plants that hurt when touched and make you itch. They do not give their strawberries or their shadow or hurt because you want it,….. they do it because that is what they are, and that is what they can give.——– So are we all people …. each one living our present moment, some able to love and create, others no… but that is what they are… you build yourself better everyday, not because there is an oak or a strawberry or an ortiga, but because you want to be better… and regarding friends, remember not to ask for shadow to the strawberry…. or strawberries to the ortiga….

  5. Jeff Harbert says:

    Nice post, Dave. I especially like the “life skills” idea. Increased education in this area, I’m absolutely convinced, is the key to decreasing reliance on welfare and low-paying, unskilled jobs. This can only benefit society as a whole, imo.

  6. Jack Yan says:

    The first one is vital, Dave

  7. chris snyder says:

    thanks for finally saying what alot of parents are afraid to, most parents just repress what they know they should do, or lie to themselves to not have the responsibility of conveying to their children the harsh reality of the world….but these are very good points for parents to follow, i could elaborate but i think you’ve got my view. thanks. oh btw this is coming from a 19/m

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