I notice that my habit is to be on my best behavior so that I can model the right way for my son. The older he grows, the more of a camcorder he becomes. He absorbs what he experiences and replays it in his own actions. When he and I are not doing well, his performance in school suffers. When I am having a rough time and lose my temper, his behavior slips. Maybe this is the plight of living as a solo parent with just the two of us in the house.
I feel like I work really hard to behave well, to be a person of character, to be my word, because he is looking and watching me. He sees me talk the talk and walk the walk. I have strong character because of my desire to be a good mom.
My habit is to share and be generous with my time and talent. My son watches how I spend my time, how and when I volunteer, and how much I work hard for our church. He is developing a habit of community service as well.
My habits are to keep my word, follow the rules, and not run red lights no matter how late I am.
I cannot help but feel like there many of us around... but that there are not yet enough of us striving to be good role models for their children or other people's children.
If there were enough of us and we all were succeeding, shouldn't this country look better and be better? Would it really be that much of a struggle to get health care reform and other public policies that benefit the least of us the most?
When do we have a tipping point in our community and culture?
The tipping point where enough people care about the well-being of all of us more than caring about personal success at the expense of us.
The tipping point when a majority of us who are prosperous arrive at the place where we can see that we have more than enough and we are willing to give generously to ensure that others' lives are bettered.
The tipping point when enough of us have a habit of valuing our children as the gifts from God that they are, rather than seeing them as possessions or trophies or nuisances... when we value, respect, and appreciate those who care for and educate our children rather than attack them, undervalue them, and under compensate them.
Tip, tip people.
Read more about Malcolm Gladwell's book, Tipping Point http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/index.html
It's a book about change. In particular, it's a book that presents a new way of understanding why change so often happens as quickly and as unexpectedly as it does. It's that ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes behave just like outbreaks of infectious disease. They are social epidemics. The Tipping Point is an examination of the social epidemics that surround us.
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Two ideas come to me as i read this column: 1) the Amereican sub-culture encourages freedom to choose from a variety of life styles and values, and 2) that acquisition of things -- animate and inanimate -- and getting more and more things has become an accepted and legitimate value. The freedom to choose value is even supported by our religions which usually say that man has free will and that the object of religion is for man to choose and want to choose God and Godly values and practices. But still, man has free will and there is no one ethos, no one set of values, no one set of life practices which humans can be required or obliged to follow. So part of the daily motion of humanity becomes men making choices -- which sometimes value greed over meeting human needs and that has to be accepted because of man's freedom to choose....
ReplyDeletePhilip Manuel
Pam, you have really made me more mindful of modeling with this post. It also gives parents a solid reason for making time for the things we value and enjoy, the activities we may refer to now as "something I used to do." Making time for self-care, be it exercise, reading, quilting, volunteering, whatever it is that a parent really enjoys is critical. Sometimes we feel like there isn't time for these activities, or that they are indulgences, but our children need to see us valuing ourselves, making time for self care and see us modeling doing the things we love - cooking, knitting, dancing, gardening, whatever it may be.
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