The Good Life

The other day at the barn, my son decided he wanted to go on a trail ride. Given how extensive the trails are on her property, I asked our trainer, “Are you ok walking him the whole way?” 

“Oh yes,” she replied. “My goal is that by spring we will be riding together.”

This was a curious statement to me but one I took full faith in its execution. Our trainer knows how to meet goals. She got me back in the show ring in the timeframe and jump height we had discussed back in January 2022. When I have my lessons, it’s obvious to me that the exercises we work on have been thoughtfully chosen to address something I need to do better. So I had no doubt that if she had her sights set on Clyde riding on his own alongside her by spring 2023 that that was the way it was going to be.

“The Good Life”: How do we help our children achieve it?

When I see the homework in Clyde’s folder or I watch Clyde’s swim team practices, I can see the logic of the exercise and somehow in my mind I can imagine the end goal. Any academic subject seems this way: reading, writing, math, arts, music. My intuition was affirmed at the parent teacher conference this fall when speaking with Clyde’s teachers. They explained very clear game plans with a very specific goal in mind. Even physical education (PE) had a clear goal for 1st graders this year: develop motor skills. When I look at how teachers or coaches approach learning, they certainly betray an air of preparation and knowledge to slowly get something done. Teachers will have gone to school to learn it. Coaches will either have been in that sport themselves and/or have training in it.

But as parents we seem to have drawn the short straw. There is no general parenting 101 course. Yet even if there were, the goals we are meant to help our kids reach seem so amorphous I am not sure that a general parenting 101 would suffice. Yet what we are meant to be teaching our children is so essential to ensuring we have well-functioning societies that I am shocked we don’t have some manual on how to teach our children to: 

Be kind to all living creatures. 

Be full of curiosity. 

Have a moral compass. 

Be honest. 

Even more practical things like bed making seem difficult. I actually found myself the other day asking, “What is the milestone here? Making half the bed? Getting the pillows up off the floor?” 

So my question out into the ether is: “Is there actually a step-by-step process to teaching your children what it means to lead a ‘good life,’ one which captures the elements above and so much more.”

Consistency, Reinforcement by Others, and Exposure

In my limited travails so far of parenting, I seem to have landed on three elements of an approach:

Consistency: let’s face it. It’s hard to remain consistent in your parenting when you often feel like a broken record and have come to reel at the sound of your own voice.

“Brush your teeth and wash your hands.”

“Get your socks and shoes on.”

“Make your bed.”

I’m annoyed at myself that almost two years since we started morning routines I still hear myself say the same thing every morning. And I took little comfort in having read one article that said you might need to ask your child to make their bed for three years consistently before they will start doing it themselves. Wow. 

But the point here is to keep doing it. And it is the same for behaviors and principles. As parents we just need to keep repeating the attributes we think are important to living a ‘good life.’

But there are some tricks for the mundane. Clyde’s teacher offered up an alternative for the constant “morning drill.” Instead of repeating the various tasks, she suggested we look at Clyde and ask him, “What should you be doing right now?” In her words, “It puts responsibility back on Clyde.” I like this. 

Reinforcement by others: there is a reason why there is an African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child. Not just because of the enormity of tasks but because of the amount of influences in your child’s life that can be helpful and meaningful.

I take an example from church recently. A mother spoke to the congregation about her youngest son and his involvement in the youth group. Without her real knowledge or understanding at the time, this youth group had significantly shaped her son’s love for community service. It was only when she read his college application that she understood, in his own written words, what certain activities had meant to him and how they had shaped in part his character. From her perspective the youth group had been an important influence on her son at a time in his life when perhaps the same lessons taught from her and her husband would not have resonated as well.
 

Whether church, extended family, close friends and neighbors, we can cultivate a community of living influences to help reinforce, and perhaps more importantly, offer up new perspectives to our children on what a ‘good life’ might mean. 

Exposure: a third way we can help our children grow into the people we hope they can be is through exposure. This is different in my mind than reinforcement. I’ve seen how Clyde’s school does it and will offer this example.

We attended a Veteran’s Day celebration on November 11th. It was a thoughtful celebration, choreographed to the last bagpipe note and speech. Certain grades had been assigned parts—ranging from reciting the Gettysburg Address by heart to singing every military branch song. The Head of School recited poetry and the 8th Grade Band played several patriotic tunes.
 

As I sat there listening to the band, these soon-to-be teenagers, blow and bang on their instruments, often making more din than music, I was thinking to myself, “This is it. Performing is part talent, but mostly courage and practice.” And by having the entire Lower School sitting there watching their elder peers playing instruments, the school was signaling the possibility that “You too, little first grader, could one day be in the 8th Grade Band.” 

Preparing the Filing Cabinet Called “The Good Life”

We really don’t know when it is all going to come together. One week ago Clyde made his bed without any prompting (and has since never made it again). Last night while playing Yahtzee, Clyde was doing the sum of 5 dice like it was “1+1+1” when a month earlier he was struggling to do 8+4. Last Sunday in church during the Prayers of the People Clyde tugged on his dad’s sleeve and asked him, “Shouldn’t we pray for grandad who is in the hospital?”

Was it my daily repetition to make the bed that finally sunk in? Was it the math flash cards that his dad has been doing with him for the last six months? Was it the act of praying every Sunday in community that prompted him to offer up his own? All these moments of teaching and repetition suddenly create a big firework in the brain but we have no idea how or when.
 

So let us give ourselves the benefit of the doubt that everything we are teaching, reinforcing and exposing our children to has its own separate file in a filing cabinet called “The Good Life.” Our jobs as parents is to figure out what are the important files that need to be in that cabinet and help our children to fill them up. And we can take comfort that we are not responsible alone for generating the content.