This year most of us are watching intently as politicians seek election to office. Adults have the privilege of choosing who will represent us in places like Washington, DC and Raleigh, so now is a unique time to teach our children. 
In our democracy that privilege of voting and making other decisions assumes that people will stay informed. We should teach our children that being informed depends on being educated – with the ability to read, understand and process information. Schools take the lead in teaching our children to read. As dads we support those efforts. But as important and sometimes overlooked, is helping our children develop the values that will guide them to making important life decisions.
All I Really Need to Know
At the recent Evening with Be There Dad we talked about some values that dads might place in the kids’ backpacks. As we have done before, we used as reference Robert Fulghum’s All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Standing the test of time, Mr. Fulghum’s list is an excellent start for “all our children really need to know” about values.
He writes in part
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be Aware of Wonder…
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
The Basic Values
Mr. Fulghum wonders, and so do I, what if we all lived by his simple rules – whether on the school playground, in our workplace, at our church or in the United States Senate? What if we began and ended every day with these simple rules? What if we started by putting just Mr. Fulghum’s short list of values in our kids back packs? And what if we made sure that EVERY kid had a similar list? Wouldn’t that be a good start?
I wonder if all the children learned these basic values from caring role models (dads), would they be able to make better decisions – not only in elections, but in everyday life? Would our children be better equipped to solve the significant issues of their time? If they “stopped hitting people” would this be a safer place for everyone to live? If they “shared everything” could they assure that no one would die from hunger? If they “played fair” could they live in harmony with civility?
The Challenge. Working Together.
The challenge is before us as parents. This election year presents a great timeframe to talk about values. Democracy is a system of government by the whole population…and it works best when all the people participate. It works even better when those people live by a set of values. And so it is with raising our children. It works well when all of us participate. It works better when we fill all the backpacks.
Teach our kids values. Show them how to live by the rules. The rest will follow. Perhaps by teaching our children we can learn something ourselves. The solution appears to be easy. The work is always hard. Dads can do it, if we work together.
