Family Values

How do you teach values to your children? Do you go to church? Volunteer a lot? Lecture them? Heekya's blog suggests that “An excellent way to share important principles and values is through storytelling.”

He refers to Dr. Paul White's article, suggesting that family values can be “embedded in these types of stories:

• Memories you have about your grandparents — things you used to do with them.
• Character qualities or talents you remember about your parents or grandparents.
• Something special you remember getting or doing on your birthday when you were growing up.
• Vacations you went on as a child and any memorable events that occurred on them.
• What Christmas was like when you were little — what were the traditions at your grandparents' homes?
• How you met your spouse; about your dating / courtship / engagement; the early years of your marriage — where did you live, what kind of work did you do?
• Some jobs you had when you were younger — including positive lessons and negative experiences.”

We do storytelling at our house, usually starting with my three year old. He tells us of the Green Planet, a utopia where nothing ever goes wrong and you have everything you could ever need or want. No asteroids ever hit the Green Planet, for example. Out of milk? There is always milk at the Green House on the Green Planet…