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Children can learn to respect property and surroundings

There was an Indian tribal leader named Chief Dan George is quoted as saying, “There is a longing among all people and creatures to have a sense of purpose and worth. To satisfy that common longing in all of us, we must respect each other.” The respect we have for each other and ourselves goes beyond just the manners we display and the courteous words we speak. Respect for physical items we value and that others value is another way of honoring each other.

All of us have physical items that are special to us. They may not be expensive items; they may have sentimental value. A young child may have created a drawing or card they want to give to their mom that they take special care to deliver in excellent condition. An older child may have a unique piece of jewelry or a journal that they prize because a grandparent gave it to them. Adults may have photographs handed down through the family that is irreplaceable and represent special memories. We show these items respect by the way we care and protect them.

The physical things that we value are shown respect by the boundaries set up around them. We may not want others to play with individual possessions, or we do not lend the item out to others. Now imagine if you are visiting friends home. Their family has things that they also value, we can show respect by asking permission before touching. We would even ask if it is okay to go into specific rooms, upstairs, downstairs, or sit on the furniture. We show respect by honoring what others value.

One other area of respect sometimes overlooked at times is the environment or surroundings we are in with other people. Respect in school with classmates, restaurants with other patrons, in sports arenas or even just in the car with the family. How we act in those situations will either bring us honor for treating others like they matter or not. In school taking turns for answering questions, doing our work and not looking at other papers is giving dignity deserved to our classmates and teachers.

In a restaurant, sitting in our seat till the family is ready to go home, keeping our voice down, leaving screens like phone or tablets off, speaking respectfully with the servers all show respect to both our family and those dining with us. No matter where we are, sports arena or a car, what is needed by others to perform their tasks with full attention requires that we remember our manners and use courtesy appropriate for the situation.

No matter where we are or who we are with, everyone around us matters. The dignity everyone deserves calls on us to show respect. As a family, have you spelled out what respect looks like in different situations for your family? Do your children know what the expectations are in different circumstances and have you named it ‘respect’? Naming and not shaming each other, setting clear boundaries while honoring each other and mindful regard for the needs for ourselves and others is respect.

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Learn to show respect for yourself

How do we learn to respect others? We begin by developing respect for ourselves. When we have self-respect, we are saying to ourselves and others that we matter also. We are willing to stand up for what is best for our bodies, mind and emotional well-being. Self-discipline, assertiveness, and moderation in all areas of life are how we show respect for ourselves.

Self-respect begins with how you treat our body:

Nutrition:  What kind of foods are you eating on a regular basis? Are you getting the vitamins from the vegetables and fruits you eat? Are the meals you eat balanced and in proportion with calorie intake appropriate to our activity and weight? Are you drinking enough water to keep you hydrated and our brain alert?

Sleep: Is your sleep habits regular and are you getting the right amount of sleep for your age and activity? Even adults need 7-9 hours of sleep to operate at their best and children need even more. Eliminating the distractions at bedtime and having a regular schedule that you keep even on the weekend shows you are respectful of our need for sleep.

Exercise: Exercise three times a week, both weight bearing and cardio are what is going to keep our bones healthy and our heart healthy. Taking the time to walk or just taking the stairs when you can all add up to helping you live longer. Exercise is not only for the body though. It is also for the brain. Reading, using your creativity, solving puzzles and continuing to learn keeps our mind from inactivity that can lead to severe issues.

Avoiding unhealthy risks: While healthy or good risks are a part of growth and meeting challenges for yourself, unhealthy risks like smoking, drugs, or anything that would harm our mind or body need to be removed or never started. Doing so shows respect for ourselves and our loved ones. All of us want to do what we can to be here with and for our family as much as possible.

Self-respect is your emotional well being too:

Goal-setting: No matter our age, young and old, having goals for what you would like to learn, challenges to overcome or a mission/purpose all show that you believe in your unique gifts and talents given to you by the Universe are to be used for the good of humanity. Starting at a young age, setting goals and learning to overcome the challenges helps us become resilient, and adults goal setting keeps us involved in living a full, happy life.

Self-talk: Respect for self by the way you speak to and about your person can build confidence and self-esteem. If you find you call yourself a name when you mess up, you soon begin to believe that you are not valuable to others. Using positive self-talk, encouraging ourselves to keep moving forward, looking for what you need versus what you do not, helps you to grow. Just asking, what virtue do I need at this moment to make a positive impact, will change how you feel about who you are and want to be.

Learning to say no to the things that do not help you to grow or be a better person and yes to the important things and people in your life shows that you respect yourself. Growth in life takes examination and reflection on taking care of ourselves, doing so on a regular basis while you work on those areas that you need to grow. Doing so sets the example for those that look up to us and might be imitating the way you act, speak and think.

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Establishing respect as an important virtue in family

In a world where there are constant examples of disrespect in words and actions that is fed to us in entertainment, social media, and community leaders, it is becoming more difficult each year to find worthy examples of respect for our children and ourselves. Respect is the most common virtue that parents want to see from their children and so we want to understand and identify what it looks like in our family and society.

Respect, like all virtues, crosses all cultural barriers as a way of showing others that we value them. However, like all virtues what it looks like, how it is seen demonstrated is different in every culture. For individuals, families, institutions like school or churches, or in national societies, what is seen as respect in one may very well be different in another.

In my family, one way that we have established as showing respect for each family member is by never leaving the house without telling both children and adults that we are going and when we expect to return. In other families that may not be as important as another way of showing respect to each other.

Once we identify what respect looks like in our family, everyone in the family must be held accountable for demonstrating this virtue in the way it is decided on to be shown. Otherwise, our children will feel like they are being singled out for particular rules that do not apply to the adults. To demonstrate this further, if you would like for your children to understand that respectful language includes not yelling or cursing, then as the parent we must be careful not to scream or curse.

Children will follow our example much faster than the instructions we give them with words. They want to grow up, be an adult and do what adults do and they learn what that looks like primarily from parents and also what they see in the world around them. How do we find and draw respect out of our children?

To begin we establish what it looks like for our family. Are we helpful to each other? Then we can say we show respect in our family by helping each other and sharing the responsibilities in the home. Is respect the use of courteous words and manners? Then we establish the behaviors that we would like to see as ‘respectful’ and call on ourselves and them to use polite words. Instead of saying “what do we say?” when it would be courteous to say thank you, we ask them “How do we show respect when someone gives us a gift?” Now we are guiding them to connect respect with courteous words and manners and not just saying the words that please the parents.

In all of this though as leaders in the family we are going to set the example by following what we have established as our family’s way of showing respect. There are other aspects of respect that are equally important. We will discuss them as the month continues including, respect for ourselves, property and environment as well as for those around us that have different cultures and ways of showing respect.
Take some time this month to discuss as a family what respect looks like in your family. Agree to practice respect in those ways with each other and those outside the household. Doing so will develop the virtue of respect for each family member and your family will be known for respect.

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Gifts of Character: Respect – The definition

Each month we will discuss one life skill with all of our students. This month’s skill is Respect. This life skill will be defined in the following ways for our students.

Young students:  “I treat you and me like we matter!”

Older students:  Behaving in ways that show that we are all worthy of care, attention, and consideration.

We are not your typical after school activity, in fact, we are an education center, working with students on physical self-defense skills while empowering families to bring out the best in our children and ourselves – through the martial arts. We believe every child has 52 gifts in them already. They only need to be taught how to grow and use them in their life. Balanced Life Skills serves parents, teachers, and students to reach that goal.

If you would like to see Joe Van Deuren and Balanced Life Skills at work, TRY CLASSES FOR FREE for 2-weeks.

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How to hold a child accountable

Accountability and the choices they make is a big lesson for kids to learn!

The role a parent plays in the lives of a child is to nurture them and provide opportunities for them to learn and explore themselves. As a child’s educator, guide, authority and counselor we can provide much for them. When they are young it feels like we are making most if not all of the choices for them. As they begin to grow though they are making choices about many parts of their life. By the time they are off to school the choices they make are now having an effect on them.

I believe this was one of the biggest revelations in my parenting life about children, choices, and control. As a first time parent, I thought I could control a lot of the end outcomes of my children. Even when my youngest was born I still thought I could make him into what I thought he should be. I tried my hardest to get him interested in sports and other areas of life that were of interest to me. All he wanted to do was read, watch movies and a few other creative activities. I did not get it, understand or particularly even like.

But I finally got the lesson. My job was to give him opportunities to explore, but in the end, it was his choice. While keeping commitments, following through and finishing started tasks were all lessons that I helped him to learn, I had a lot less to do with his personality, likes and dislikes, and who he was growing into being as a young adult. The reason I tell this story is that many of us parents figure out at a point in our parenting career that everything a child does is a choice they are making.

Even when they are younger they choose to go along with our request for their own reasons. It may be so they do not to get into trouble, or because they want something later on. But they make a choice. When we the parents learn to allow them to make choices after we educate them in the consequences of their choice we are doing two things:

  1. We are teaching them how to make choices
  2. We are teaching them to deal with the consequences.

So how do we do this when they are young? There was a young boy in my martial arts school one time who was about 5 years old. His mother came in a big hurry, flustered because she felt the need to go back to her son’s school and get his homework that he had forgotten to put in his backpack. What she was not thinking about was the lesson this was teaching the young boy. He was learning that if he made a mistake that mom or dad would swoop in and fix it for him.

Now really at the age of five one homework paper is not going to ruin his career later in life. But if he does not learn to be accountable for his responsibilities that could follow him for a very long time in life. It is hard as a parent to see your child not get what they want. But the actual consequence in this situation is less dramatic than years from now when trouble or mistakes are made and mom or dad is not there to fix them. Accountability in small things when they are young help them to grow into responsible men and women, accountable for themselves.

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How children learn responsibility

In a quote from Abigail Van Buren about responsibility she encouraged parents to put some responsibility on the shoulders of children. In today’s world, there are two somewhat opposing opinions about responsibility and children. One camp promotes the idea that children should be allowed to be children and the other camp suggests that they need to have responsibilities if they are going to stand on their own two feet as adults.

Unfortunately we often see big swings in the thoughts about parenting that shift from one extreme to the other. As with most thoughts, ideas, and practices, balance is critical so that neither extreme is placed on the child. I would agree that it is important to allow children to be children. They need time to play and learn about themselves.We see youngsters playing sports earlier and earlier while studies have shown that waiting and allowing fine motor skills to catch up to gross motor skills is the way to play at a higher level later in life.

More troubling is that in the world of childhood from fashion, cosmetics, and risky behaviors like drug and alcohol, sexual activity, trouble with the law has gone from a mid-teen issue to the 8-12-year-olds. Many of these children are seeing themselves as independent and as described by the Manhattan – Institute “isolated from family and neighborhood, shrugged at by parents, dominated by peers”. Even in my speaking with children, they may have very few chores or responsibilities within the family, saying Oh we have a cleaning person or I don’t have to do …. Someone does that for me.

The virtue of responsibility is known by every adult to be a part of everyday life. So how do we help our children to learn to be held accountable and allow them to have a childhood?  It is simply about how old the child is and where they are in their developmental stage. Giving a child a task to be responsible for does not need to be given as an authoritarian taskmaster.

Beginning at an early age showing a child how to do a task and then allowing them to do it to the best of their ability without insisting on perfection is a great start. It may be picking up the toys together, pulling the covers up on the bed. Later as they get older they might learn to match socks, unload the silverware, and soon they are able to sort the laundry and put dishes away. These are all ways for them to contribute to the family and feel needed.

Responsibility though is also about learning to keep their promises and commitments. We can teach them that getting to events or things they are participating in on time is showing responsibility. This they can learn by using language to guide them to that understanding. We may say to them, “When we get to your lessons on time, we are showing responsibility.” Later if you need to get them to move more quickly you may direct them by saying, “I need you to show responsibility and be ready to leave in 10 minutes.

Responsibility can be practiced as they learn about returning items that are borrowed and making sure they are in good condition when we return them. It may be a toy or a library book, but when we guide them with the word and the behavior they begin to understand what responsibility looks like.

As they get older we can begin to introduce the idea of prioritizing our tasks and putting the biggest and most important tasks first, even if it is more fun to do the other ones. Some children can have this virtue even overdeveloped and we may need to help them to use moderation and flexibility. However, rescuing our children from things that they are developmentally prepared for, just to give them an easier life is not helping them grow up to be contributing members of society. Keeping the balance though will allow them plenty of time for play which is equally important to their development.