Children Learn What they Live - Role Modeling

Each year as the weather gets cooler and the holidays approach, we look for ways to help our children understand what it means to be thankful, and how to help those who are less fortunate. We look for ways to get them to appreciate all that they have, not just material things, but also the numerous people in their lives that love, support and care for them. [ What often comes to mind is the poem "Children Learn What They Live" by Dorothy Law Nolte. Not only is this poem framed and hanging on our walls at home, but we also use this poem during staff orientation to encourage role modeling of good values by our counselors. This poem so simply and eloquently tells the importance of showing children how to be good people by doing it ourselves.

One of the lines in the poem is "If children live with sharing, they learn generosity". From a very young age children benefit from seeing adults share with others. For young children, sharing begins with letting others play with their toys and learning to take turns. Then as they get older, children see you share your time, energy or money with people who are less fortunate or unable to do for themselves. Here at Southwoods we are blessed to have so many sharing and generous families. Year after year, your children swim for Morry's Camp to help raise money for less fortunate children to go to camp. Then, many of our Southwoods parents continue to share by donating money to Morry's Camp. It is a very proud time at our reunion each year to be able present Morry's Camp with a check from Southwoods that includes money from our camp families. There is no better way to teach the lesson of sharing with children than to help others. This year, if you don't have a charity already, include your children in the process of choosing one. Discuss different causes and let your children tell you what they think is an important cause to contribute to. Then, let them donate their own pennies or dollar. These small acts will have lasting impacts.

The last line of the poem says, "If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live. Making friends and being good friends are two things we focus a lot on during the summer months at Southwoods. Through the fall reunion, our winter weekend and our newsletter we encourage our campers to communicate with each other to help foster the friendships that were formed at camp. One of the things we tell our campers is that to get to know someone better, or to become good friends with someone, you have to talk to them and stay in touch. This is the perfect time of year to reach out and tell those people in your life how much you care or appreciate them. Encourage your children to contact camp friends and those people they would like to get to know better. Encourage your child to write letters, draw pictures, make a phone call, send an email or plan a visit with all the people in their lives that they care about. They will learn how to be a more caring person, with lots and lots of practice. And, with all that is going on in the world, learning to make friends and be a friend seems more important than ever.

Children learn what they live. It's this idea that inspired "The Southwoods Way". We strive here at Southwoods to role model what you do at home and to help you develop children that are caring, generous, thoughtful people. We truly appreciate getting to spend the summers with your children and getting to know your families. We hope you enjoy the holidays and have lots of fun being thankful this season.

www.southwoods.com

Suggested Reading:
Children Learn What the Live: Parenting to Inspire Values By Dorothy Law Nolte and Rachel Harris.