Teaching Children to Thrive
This series of blogs is taken from articles by Charles Debelak in the Birchwood School of Hawken's Clipboard during the 2013-14 school year. The purpose of Mr. Debelak's Clipboard articles is to provide parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and Mr. Debelak's 40+ years educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents.
In teaching children to thrive we need to understand the interplay between language, experience, and habit formation. Language lays the foundation for understanding and guides experiences. The language of thriving, when internalized, helps children practice behaviors that promote and support thriving. Practice through experience, and under the guidance of language, results in habits. The accumulation of habits constitutes character.
The relationship between language and experience works in different ways. Sometimes language affects behaviors directly and immediately. Here the impact is incremental, shaping habits little-by-little, like when we teach children to say “please” and “thank you.”
Other times the language of thriving is like a seed sown into a child’s heart. We do not see the fruit immediately but the potential is percolating within the seed. At the right time, under the right experience, the seed blossoms and language impacts behavior.
In this behavioral scenario, parents and educators cannot be disappointed if they see their lessons go unheeded. Parents often lament, “What’s the use? He doesn’t listen to me. My words go in one ear and out the other!” Parents become discouraged in their efforts. It seems their words have no effect and even elicit negative reactions from their children.
What is to be done? Ignore their reactions. The language you give your children is much more powerful than their childish moods. The language you speak will function as a seed in their hearts and will have the power to speak to their hearts long after they walk away from you.
I have a good example from close friends of mine; let’s call them Bob and Gina. They admonished their children year after year about setting goals. “Responsible people have goals,” they would insist. “What are your goals, children? What are your goals at school? What are your goals for soccer?” But like all children, they would shrug their shoulders, roll their eyes, and mumble, “I don’t know.”
One day their teenage son, Billy, came home from school ecstatic, and at the dinner table, gushing with enthusiasm, he explained, “Dad. Mom. Mr. Jones my English teacher talked to us today about setting goals. Do you realize that productive people are goal-setters? Mr. Jones told us that we need to set goals for every aspect of our life. That is how we grow. Isn’t that fantastic! What an idea! I am going right upstairs after dinner, write out my goals, and post them on my bulletin board. Gosh, that Mr. Jones is really a smart guy.”
Bob and Gina, stunned, feeling belittled and unappreciated, wondered why their son did not listen and respond to their goal-setting admonitions. Later, when their petty feelings of personal offense subsided, they gained perspective. In order for their son to be able to respond to Mr. Jones’ goal-setting admonition, Billy needed years of language from Bob and Gina. That language, apparently unheeded, was incubating in Billy’s heart. Its practical effect upon Billy’s life required maturity, the right timing, and the right set of circumstances. Bob and Gina’s consistent and persistent language set the stage for the right moment of awakening or awareness – a kind of enlightenment for Billy. Billy was empowered at that moment of time to begin the practice of goal-setting, driven no longer by mom and dad hovering over Billy, but by his own desire to be a goal-setter.
What is important to note is that if there had not been language, neither would there have been the awakening. Without language, Billy would have been unaffected by Mr. Jones admonition. But having language from his parents incubating in his heart, when the time was ripe, Billy realized the importance of the goal-setting – a critical feature of thriving.
From the April 2014 Birchwood Clipboard
