Meridian Magazine: Teaching Values All Year Round

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For well over a year, Meridian Magazine has run a weekly column on methods to teach our children the Meridian Family Value of the Month. These twelve basic and universal values are the heart of strong families, and working on one value at a time is the best way for parents to protect their children, and to give them a legacy of responsibility and contribution in the world.

Now that all twelve values have run, the weekly column has concluded. But each value for each month of the year remains available in the Meridian archives, and can be clicked directly to from the front page of every day's Meridian edition (just click on "Family Value of the Month" at the upper left of the home page.) Click here to go to the values archives now.

With each month's value (in the archives) are clear and specific ideas, stories, and methods to teach that value to preschoolers, to elementary age kids, and to adolescents. At the first of each month, there will be a "reminder article" here on Meridian about the upcoming month's value and how important (and how fun) it is to teach to our children.

The whole idea here is that there is strength (and encouragement) in numbers. As all Meridian families work on the same value each month, we all take heart in the unity and solidarity of being involved with thousands of other parents — all working with their kids on the same concepts, the same ideas, and focusing on the same value.

New families can come into the sequence any time, and will always start with the value of HONESTY on their first month and then in the following month will flow into the value that everyone else is doing that month. In the two non-school months (June and July) no value is assigned so that families can pick the two values they feel they need the most work on and repeat them. So the ongoing (and repeating) schedule looks like this:

Honesty (Initial Adventure* — everyone starts with this value regardless of the month they begin)
Love (March)
Unselfishness and Sensitivity (April)
Kindness and Friendliness (May)
Repeat of a value you feel needs extra concentration (June)
Repeat of a second value you feel needs extra concentration (July)
Courage (August)
Peaceability (September)
Self-Reliance and Potential (October)
Self-Discipline and Moderation (November)
Fidelity and Chastity (December)
Loyalty and Dependability (January)
Respect (February)
Justice and Mercy (Concluding Adventure* — everyone finishes their first year's cycle with this value)

So, if you were going to start your family's participation in the Meridian Family Value of the Month program now, you would begin with the value of Honesty, and work on it for the whole month of February, using the methods and teaching ideas in the value of the month archive. Then in March, you would shift to the value of Love, and so on.

Meridian is pleased to have a partnership with Richard and Linda Eyre on this value of the month concept. As many readers know, the Eyres are the authors of the New York Times #1 bestseller Teaching Your Children Values, and they will write our Meridian Value update articles at the first of each month. Now here is an introductory article by the Eyres, who offer a special gift to Meridian readers at the end of today’s article

A Personal Introduction to the Family Values Concept
By Richard and Linda Eyre

We are honored to be involved in the Meridian Value of the Month program, because we believe that:

The family is the basic unit of society.
Society will change only as the families within it change.
Families are strengthened by the ingraining of fundamental values.

We are also personally more aware than ever before of the powerful forces that unite the families of the whole world despite the forces that are trying to divide and destroy them. On a recent speaking tour, we went around the globe twice and spoke in 38 different locations on parenting and on Teaching Children Values. (Here is the back of a "world tour” t-shirt that our concert-going kids had us put together.)

What a joy it is for us to be part of an effort what essentially says, "Since all of us parents essentially want the same values for our children, let's unite and work together in teaching those values — sharing our ideas, our worries, and our methods as we focus and concentrate and work on the same value each month!"

The Meridian site has been (and continues to be) the perfect place to get like-thinking parents together from around the globe. Just think about it. We all log on from our computers, we read the Meridian articles that interest us, and while we are here, we look at the Meridian Family Value of the Month and pick up on the ideas that we think will work with our kids. We're each encouraged by the fact that we know the ideas have been tested, and that they will work — that they will really and truly teach that value to our children.

Let’s face it, sometimes parenting can be a pretty lonely proposition. We sit in our own home in our own little part of the world, and we think no one else has quite as hard a time with getting a child to mind, or to pick up his stuff, or to stop fighting with her brother, or to stop spending so much time with kids who are a bad influence, or to stay off the X-Box or the wrong part of the Internet. And much of our parenting is reactionary or "defensive" — just trying to correct and to discipline and to stop bad things from getting worse.

The purpose of the Meridian Family Value off the Month has been to empower and unite us as parents, to give us the motivation and encouragement of knowing that tens if not hundreds of thousands of parents, spread throughout the world, are working with their kids on the same value that you are working on this month. There are dozens of specific ideas for teaching each value, and they are divided and presented by age group, so that, no matter what age your kids are, you can quickly find tested and proven ideas to use in your own home.

Concentrating on one value each month gives us an offense that lets us be proactive as parents rather than reactive and always on the defense. Teaching our children specific values — really ingraining these twelve basic values into their souls is the best way to protect our children — is an initiative of the first order, and it will prevent many of the problems that we would otherwise spend forever trying to defend against.

This whole value-of-the-month program is based on four basic premises:

There are certain universal values that are part of every religious and moral tradition and that parents everywhere want for their children because they know that they lead to a happier and fuller life. LDS parents are particularly attuned to these values and can take a leadership role in making them available (and attractive) to parents everywhere.
These specific values can be clearly identified and taught to children. What it takes is focus and concentration on each value for a defined period — with methods that are tried and proven. And it takes repetition. This focus and this repetition can be facilitated by defining and refining moral principles into twelve Values — one for each month — and then by concentrating for a full month on a particular value. At the end of each year, the twelve values can "start over" in families where each child is now a year older and will learn the same values on a new level each year.
Different methods for teaching each value will work best for different families with different age children in different situations. Parents do best when they have a lot of ideas and methods to choose from, and when they can both receive and share methods from and with other parents.
There is no better place to share and to mutually motivate than on the Internet. Meridian Magazine starts with nearly a million readers, nearly all of whom are parents or have a special interest in children. Many will just "consume" or use ideas that are presented, but many others will also want to share their own ideas and experiences on line.

A Special Gift from the Eyres to Help You Get Started

As a token of our appreciation to you as a Meridian reader — and as a motivation to get your family started on the Value of the Month concept — we want to send you a personal gift. It is a CD that will help with the initial value of HONESTY. It is called Alexander's Amazing Adventure, and it is an exciting audio adventure about a boy named Alexander who discovers the power and importance of honesty. Kids from 4 to 14 will love it, and it will give you a basis (and some examples) for your own discussions about Honesty with your children. Just send a stamped, self addressed envelope to us and we will send you the CD free of charge. The padded, 5X7 envelopes are best, and it will need 3 regular stamps. Send to:

Richard and Linda Eyre
1098 Augusta Way
Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108

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About the Author:

Linda and Richard Eyre, parents of nine children and authors (together and individually) of more than thirty books, are now focusing on reaching families and individuals online. Through their web sites www.valuesparenting.com, http://www.theeyres.com/, and http://www.familynightlessons.com/, their frequent media appearances on shows such as Oprah, The CBS Early Show, The Today Show, and BYU Television, and their world-wide lecture tours, they continue to work at their mission statement – "FORTIFY FAMILIES, popularize parenting, validate values, and bolster balance."

Linda is a teacher and musician and founder of "Joy Schools." She was named by the National Council of Women as one of America's six outstanding young women. Richard, a former mission president in London and candidate for Utah governor, was the director of the White House Conference on Parents and Children for President Reagan. Both of the Eyres have served on numerous civic, arts, university, and humanitarian boards and head a foundation that focuses on the needs of third world children.