Editor’s Note:  Welcome to the Meridian Family Value for October.  As you may know by now, Meridian Magazine, in collaboration with Linda and Richard Eyre, presents a specific and particular value each month, complete with methods for teaching each age group of children. At the first of the month there is an overview article (like this one) and then each week there are follow up bulletins with additional ideas and teaching methods. Meridian readers can also send in their own thoughts and ideas on the value of the month (click here to read the explanatory article that started this series).  Anytime during the month, you can click on the “family value of the month” icon on the Meridian home page and go directly to the teaching ideas for the month.

There is a certain comfort and power in knowing that thousands of other Meridian reading families are working on the same value each month. You can also go to www.valuesparenting.com for additional ideas on each value.

Now, for this great month of October, let’s turn our attention to the pivotal value of self-reliance and potential. Of all the monthly values, this is one that has the most to do with maturity and growing up and with children finding and becoming their best selves. We define this month’s value as: Individuality. Awareness and development of gifts and uniqueness. Taking responsibility for own actions. Overcoming the tendency to blame others for difficulties. Commitment to personal excellence.

Introduction

Our fifteen-year-old daughter, true to her age, her hormones, and her nature, had spent the evening altering between hot anger, cool sullenness, agitated irritation at other family members, and woeful, sorrowful withdrawal. “I’m going to flunk math because the teacher is so weird. He never explains anything. He grades way too hard. He never calls on me when my hand is up. I don’t care anyway, grades are way too important to most people. Actually it’s my brothers and sisters who are ruining my grade. They’re so loud and noisy, I can’t study around here. Forget about an A! A B- is okay. It’s not best, but it’s good, and no one should be dissatisfied with good. If you’d been around more to help me study, maybe I wouldn’t be this mess.” It was a not-so-rare collection of statements illustrating self-criticism and the blaming of others that goes on so often with some adolescents. But it wasn’t our daughter’s truest self. We had learned that at such moments there was little to do but wait for that truer inner self to emerge.

It finally did, about ten-thirty. “I’m sorry, Mom and Dad. That was stupid. It’s my class and my grade. It’s my own fault about the last test. I’ll go see if I can make it up. I know I have the ability to get an A.”

Jekyll and Hyde? So many adolescents are. The challenge for parents is to encourage the Jekyll and help it win over the long run.

There are two separate but closely related principles involved here. The first is the self-reliance of accepting the responsibility for and the consequences of one’s own actions and performance, rather than blaming luck or circumstances or someone else. The second is the finding of our full abilities by trying to be one’s best self and asking the best from oneself — the conscious pursuit of individuality and potential — and the conscious rejection of avoidable mediocrity.

“Self-reliance and potential,” as we have called it, is a powerful value. Those who have it help others by accepting responsibility and doing their best in the world. Those who don’t have it hurt others by blaming them and by failing to develop the gifts and talents that could serve or enlighten or benefit other people. One who reaches his potential helps others in many ways as he develops himself. One who never seeks his full potential indirectly hurts others by not doing the good or setting the example he is capable of.

This value is about trying to know ourselves, to do our best, and to accept the consequences both of who we are and of what we do.

One way to think of self-reliance and potential is as two sides of the same coin. Self-reliance has a lot to do with taking the blame or the responsibility for negative things that happen. Potential has a lot to do with taking a little credit and taking the right kind of pride in what we are able to become and what we are able to accomplish.  When we take blame and responsibility, we resolve and grow and improve. When we don’t we become bitter, jealous, and defensive. When we take positive pride in what we’re doing with ourselves and our gifts, we feel the growth of individuality and self-esteem.  When we don’t, we tend to become followers of plodders in the standard ruts of life.

Good luck in making this your family’s value for the month of October!

General Guidelines

Use yourself as the model and example.Show your children that you “value this value” and that you work for it. Take every opportunity to show your children how you are trying to improve. Talk about the things you think you’re good at and working to become better at.

Show pleasure in thing you do well. Also, be obvious about taking the blame for mistakes you make. Say, “You know, that was my fault. Here’s what I could have done differently …”

Let your children see that you can accept responsibility and blame and let them see that you take pride in who you are and that you are working to be better.

Watch your children. Try to recognize their gifts and help them develop their unique individuality. We must know potential before we can reach it. Children are not interchangeable “lumps of clay” that can be molded into whatever we please. Rather, they are “seedlings” that have their own separate and distinct gifts and potentials. We can never change an oak into a pear tree. But we can watch and recognize as early as possible who they are — and then nourish and encourage them to be the best of whatever they are. As parents we must consciously commit ourselves to finding out who our children truly and deeply are rather than trying to conform them  to who and what we wish they were or to extensions of our own egos.

It is tragic that, despite our professing that our children are our highest priority, the average parent spends only seven minutes per day with an individual child.

Praise.  Reinforce your children’s self image and individuality and build their confidence — that is required for self-reliance. Like flowers under rain and sunshine, children blossom and bloom under recognition and praise. “Catch them doing something good” and when you do, give effusive praise! When they make mistakes or fall short, help them accept responsibility for it and ten praise that acceptance to the point that their pride in their self-reliance outshines their concern over the shortcoming.

We’ll be back in a week for some age specific teaching methods for preschoolers, elementary age, and adolescents. Remember to visit the Eyres at www.valuesparenting.com.