Nina Gilfert | From the Porch Steps: Teach your children
We all learn as we grow, including our children. Each parent has to pass along to their offspring the essentials they grew up knowing, but there are some things life itself teaches all of us.
Very early on we learn how to get up when we fall down. Just watch a toddler and you see that lesson being learned. Whether or not that lesson is applied to all of life's little experiences is an individual test. As Gilbert and Sullivan said, “List and learn you little children, roses white and roses red.”
Note: You don't have to teach them to fall. That lesson is built in. We all accomplish that within the first year of our life. It's the ones who don't learn to pick themselves up who are in trouble. I was walking at nine months of age. I must have done a lot of falling and getting back up.
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I grew up with a brother and two sisters. More siblings were added as I came into adulthood but I didn't have to deal with them, since I left home before they became upwardly mobile. That's the way it is in big families.
I left home at 17 and went to live and work in Washington, D.C., as many young people did in the 1940s. Depending on the kindness and understanding of strangers is not an easy way to grow up, but it is quicker.
You learn not to volunteer until you know to what you are committing. You learn that on your first day if you are wise. If you are not wise it takes a little longer.
Hopefully by the time you have to deal with children of your own you have learned to at least be responsible for yourself because now you become the teacher.
A lot of responsibility teaching has to do with knowing when to shut up. You can give them constant verbal lessons as you watch them get into some kind of trouble or another. Or you can let them find out for themselves that some things will inevitably go wrong but when they do, you will be there.
When your toddler first stands upright and then lets go of the chair or table he was holding on to, you gasp (inaudibly of course). They have just taken that second step into independence.
That first step was crawling around on their hands and knees to get to where they wanted to be or to be within reach of something that attracted them. Now they are within reach of the knife drawer in the kitchen or the door knob on the basement door.
As your child matures that knife drawer will become symbolic to many challenges. You have just reached that second level of responsibility teaching. Now you will be glad of the fact that they have a working vocabulary and understand when you say "no" or “That's mother's. This is yours.”
At this point I always remember the beautiful crystal cigarette box I gave to my friend and her husband for their coffee table. Said husband was determined he could teach his toddler son not to touch, and so the beautiful crystal box ended up broken on the living room floor.
You have to "know when to hold 'em and when to fold em.' "
The first time your child comes home from school with tears in their eyes you know you are dealing with something more than a scraped knee or a bloody nose. This has become more complicated and you instinctively know that the less you say and the more you listen, the better.
This is heavy stuff, and they are looking to you to know how to fix it when you don't know what "it" is. It is important to know when a hug is in order and permission to cry.
Later a teary-eyed smile tells you that you have said and done the right thing. And you still don't know what went wrong.
You will soon come to know that responsibility is love in action.
Have I been successful in teaching you responsibility? I will probably never know but you will. The truth is, it's kind of like love: Either you have it or you don't.
When you care enough you will say and do the right thing simply by your desire to help. The trick is not to do too much or say too much.
The secret is being there at the right time. It's like noticing that your husband has come up from the basement and left the door open before your baby daughter does.
Nina Gilfert can be reached at ngporch@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Daily Commercial: Nina Gilfert offers some insights on raising kids
