The greatest thing you'll ever learn

[pegkerr]

As I was making my breakfast this morning I had the KSJN Morning Show on, and the song "Nature Boy" started playing.

After listening for a moment, I stepped out into living room, where Fiona was playing a computer game and Rob was talking to Delia, who was sitting on his lap.

"May I have your attention for a moment?" I said. My family looked up at me expectantly. "I just wanted to say that I think that this song has it right. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." I went over and kissed Delia on the top of her head. "If you take anything from what your parents teach you, remember that."

"That's a pretty good rule," said Rob.

If you had to boil down what you want to pass on to your children to one sentence, what would it be?

Comments

[jemyl.livejournal.com]

My children are grown now. What I most hope that they learned from me was: treat everyone with respect and compassion and be honest and true to yourself, always. I also tried to teach them to write well and to speak well and to both choose their battles wisely, being careful what they wished for. That my girls be spiritual and aware of the importance of self-esteem was also important to me. It turned out that one of them is a born again conservative Christian stay at home mom married to a Christian magazine editor while the other is a single wiccan wonder-woman who works as a system administrator. One completed college with a degree in geography while the other took enough hours to complete a degree but not enough in any one thing to complete a major. The second is my renaissance woman. Both of them tend to think outside the box and don't do things just because everyone else does them. Both are strong women.

Since all of my boys were originally Bill's family, I did not raise them or my oldest daughter. I taught my girls to be independent of thought and deed and not to blindly accept anything just because it was said by a male, even their husband or boyfriend. I think I would teach the same to a boy, with the exception that I would also teach him that women were not chattel and that marriage is a joining of equals. At the same time I know I would teach boys, as Bill did ours, that it is mainly the husband's job to work and provide economically for himself and his family. I would also teach that the way a man should be is not set in stone and he and his mate have to work that out on their own without being tied to convention or stereotypes. For instance, it could turn out that he was the better cook and care giver while his mate/wife/woman could be the better wage earner and that was OK too.