Weekly Inspirations:
The Heart of Honesty
When ever I speak on building character in one’s children, my home evolves into one mad science lab where my children squeak like guinea pigs, and I am the wicked scientist whose head detaches itself multiple times during the course of the week.
This was one of those weeks, and without fail, we had a few of those moments (hmm…I think I call them bedlam moments).
Less you think I didn’t share them with the ladies that I spoke to…..I did…..since October’s family virtue is honesty, how horrible would that be if I didn’t share from the heart. 🙂
As I have mentioned before, our family focuses on one specific character quality a month. I realized that I have been lax in bringing some hands on activities for you to implement with your own family. I love to refer to them as “tools of intentionality.”
These are for all the blogless moms that will be visiting in the next few days…do I dare suck them into this new world?
These are just a sampling of things that our family does..sometimes oh, so excellently, and sometimes..yep…sheer bedlam. My hope is that they can be a helpful jumping off point in furthering the character development within your family tapestry.
Please don’t get overwhelmed. It only takes one simple tradition executed purposefully to create those memory moments that one desires for their home.
Teaching Honesty
“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” Thomas
Many of us are honest with others but not always honest with ourselves, or how we represent ourselves to other people. We are afraid that if we reveal how we really think or feel, others will not like us. Since authenticity (being true to who are) is the foundation for all good relationships, this is one of those important life lessons that will impact your child’s happiness throughout their lifetime.
We need to teach the little people in our lives that it is okay to express their true feelings, as long as they do it in respectful and constructive ways. Young children naturally say
what they feel and think, but they learn early in life that many emotions are “bad,” so they begin to lie in order to hide those “bad” feelings.
We mustn’t forget that we cannot always control our feelings. They come and they go.
We can, however, control our behavior, and we can CHOOSE how we respond. Make it clear to your children that no one else “makes” them behave in a certain way.
How they behave is their own choice and responsibility, no one else’s. As they express themselves, use this as a precious opportunity to dig into their heart, and begin meaningful conversations about what the root of their “feelings” are. With my younger one, quite often the “I want this” response comes to light.
What a wonderful time to begin directing them back to the abundance of things we can choose to be grateful for. Focus on the little – everyday things that they may miss in cultivating this heart of gratitude. Just a few things off the top of my head might be the way the sun pokes through the clouds creating a rainbow of interesting colors, the smell of clothes after they have been washed (seriously – have them smell the laundry and then compare them to my boys’ football uniforms.), the bird’s that sing so sweetly on your walk through the neighborhood, and most importantly, the glorious sound and smell of the coffee pot as it welcomes a new day…oh, right…this is for the kids…sorry. 🙂
The attitude of Gratitude, even in the midst of disappointing situations, is a key focus area in our kids, and we keep a Gratitude Journal. And yep…Gratitude is our November virtue, so I can’t wait to share more. 🙂 The next few weeks….Honesty…and I can’t wait to hear some of your stories.
If you desire some additional ideas for the month, this post continues at my sorely neglected home school blog – Teaching Classically.
Thank you for the comment! Oh, the good old days 🙂
I enjoyed your post and we are currently going through the lessons of teaching our middle daughter that she, and only she, is responsible for her actions. We get an awful lot of “but she made me do it, but she was doing it, etc…”
Great suggestions and advice!
Have a great day 🙂
Krista
Can I come live at your house? : )
Looking forward to seeing what you say about gratitude next month…with an only child who thinks the world revolves around him, I have a hard time teaching him to be grateful for anything!
Did I not leave you a comment telling you I gave you an award? HA! Sorry! I thought I had told everyone…I must have been asleep. At least now you know! : )
thank you so much for posting this. I love ideas to help instill character traits that are tangible…so my little ones can actually “see” what I am talking about. Thanks!!!
oh Jen!
From your PDF to your intentionally parenting snippets… I am encouraged and inspired to stay the course!
BTW – We still try to pull in the Family Times CDs and associated resources… This has helped some of our family devotional times… I thank Westover for “hooking me up” with this resource :)…
Hope you had a great weekend! Prayed for you!
I love this!!!! I am going to look right now!!! Thank you for taking the time to share this…how valuable!
-Sandy Toes
Here I am again…I love those pretzels…they are so cute…what great ideas!!!
Hey, Jen! You put so much thought and work into your blog. Those pretzels are such a cute idea and really yummy looking, too!
Annabelle 🙂
That is AWESOME!! I love this idea. We used to do something similar but have been slacking lately ourselves. We try to coincide it with a verse as well.
Thanks for the great suggestions!
Sometimes I think that teaching kids honesty and personal responsibility and about accountability is one of the toughest lessons. Especially when the world at large teaches them otherwise! Thanks for the comment love today….what a day its been!
Lovely, lovely post – and I love the PDF. I love the part about making sure your children know that noone else MAKES them behave a certain way; I repeat that so often with my 5 year old who loves to blame any (bad) behavior he has on his younger brother.
Thanks for sharing!
This is great. There has been a bit of “hitting” going on in our house lately and they always blame it on their siblings being annoying or whatever, but I’ve been trying to teach them to take responsibility for their own responses, regardless of what their sister was doing to them. A very timely post! Thanks.
Great post! Teaching the lesson of honesty is a must and creating a home environment for open conversation is essential. We were homeschoolers for 3 years and loved it!
Thanks for stopping by my blog. Love your coupon tutorial. I now have a CVS card and buy 2 newspapers.
I love this. I downloaded the Honesty Worksheet and will print it out to go over with our family. It truly is an important character to instill in our young ones and I'm happy to have stumbled across your post about it! Thanks!