With the end of the school year, tens of thousands of children and youth from pre-school through teenage are being released into the homes and streets of America. Many are fortunately being enrolled in numerous summer camps and other wonderful programs while many others, for whatever reason, will remain idle for the most part. It is most rewarding, however, to learn of increasing numbers of short and long-term programs and activities being offered throughout summer months by various churches, and ministries as well as other independent groups and organizations. Lists of many summer camps and programs are usually posted in daily papers while various others appear in weekly newspapers and periodicals.
There are many theories on the upbringing of children with the most authoritative ones usually coming from “experts”–who never had any.
One theory is that children should be taught nothing but morals, manners, and disciplinary values for the first five years of life, the most formative years, as such values and virtues are far more difficult to acquire later in life, particularly those having to do with self-discipline.
Unfortunately, the ego-driven personalities of far too many begin pushing the child academically or professionally in some particular area of achievement in which we ourselves either excelled or failed to do so. The primary motivation is to produce a child (or children) on whose superior achievements we can boast, rather than encouraging instead, a more normal, healthy, and happy childhood that would more easily adapt to and be compatible with other children and people of all ages, races, and levels of society.
Another important quality to teach the child early in life is a sense of humor that if able to acquire later in life, may tend to be more cynical. Someone has compared life without humor with riding a vehicle with no shocks down a rough, rocky road–from which permanent psychological and other damage can result.
But topping the list of virtues to be taught to children at the earliest ages, by word and example, is appreciation–an attitude of gratitude for all blessings great and small, emanating from recognition of manifold tokens of the presence, love, and nearness of God which perpetually surround us. Many today also grow up in homes where parents shelter them from all kinds of struggle but we are reminded in the Baha’i Holy Writings “Anything achieved without struggle is not likely to be valued or appreciated.”
Therefore we must “Appreciate the day in which we are living,” the Writings contend for on this day “Man is in the highest degree of materiality and at the beginning of spirituality… the end of imperfection and the beginning of perfection…” Usually acquired through struggle and a painful purification process for “With fire We test gold and with gold We test servants.”
