“Teach your children well…” ~CSNY

When I was preg­nant the first time we got talk­ing, as I’m sure most couples do, about how we hoped to raise our kids, y’know, what’s our Par­ent­ing Philo­sophy? I’m not sure if we settled on a set of rules and guidelines before the Boy was born, though we talked about things we did and did­n’t like about how our own par­ents raised us. But as soon as the Boy was born we were both deeply struck by some­thing: We felt SO respons­ible. Like, this is a liv­ing, breath­ing human, and we have to help him thrive phys­ic­ally and emo­tion­ally, and we real­ised that this small creature we held in our arms was a sponge. We said to each oth­er: Every single thing we do is teach­ing him some­thing. With our every word, every action, every reac­tion, with the way relate to him and to each oth­er, we are teach­ing him some­thing. And there­fore… with both kids, we need to always be think­ing: What do we want them to learn? With every thing we say, and do. Every action, every reac­tion… What do we want them to learn?

It felt heavy at first, but we got used to it. We got into being par­ents on pur­pose, so we owed it to our kids to take the job ser­i­ously. You’ve got to “Teach your chil­dren well…”