Richard Eyre - Teaching Your Children Values

Other books by Richard and/or Linda Eyre:

LifeBalance

Teaching Children Joy

Teaching Children Responsibility

Teaching Children Sensitivity

Simplified Husbandship/Simplified Fathership

The Awakening (A Novel)

A Joyful Mother of Children

Free to Be Free

I Didnt Plan to Be a Witch

Serendipity of the Spirit

Stewardship of the Heart

Linda EyreRichard Eyre

A Fireside Book Published by Simon & Schustar
New York London Toronto Sydney

FIRESIDE
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 1993 R. M. Eyre & Associates, Inc.

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

FIRESIDE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

DESIGNED BY BARBARA MARKS

Manufactured in the United States of America

30 29 28 27 26

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Eyre, Richard.

Teaching your children values / Richard & Linda Eyre.

p. cm.

A Fireside book.

1. Social valuesStudy and teachingUnited States. I. Eyre, Linda. II. Title.

HM216.E94 1993

649.1dc20 92-39038

CIP

ISBN: 0-671-76966-9
ISBN 13: 978-0-671-76966-6
eISBN-13: 978-1-439-14765-8

Contents

Why?
Living by certain tried-and-proven standards is the best route to personal happiness as well as to a stable and productive society.

When?
Values should be taught to children of all ageswith differing agendas and changing emphasis as children mature.

Where?
Values are best taught in the home.

Who?
Parents are the crucial exemplars and instructors.

What?
Each parent must decide which values to teach. This book is a menu from which to choose and a teaching system that will help with whatever values parents select.

How?
There are some methods especially well suited to teaching values to preschoolers. Other methods work best for elementary ages, and still others are effective for adolescents.

Month 1:Honesty
with other individuals, with institutions, with society, with self the inner strength and confidence that is bred by exacting truthfulness, trustworthiness, and integrity

Month 2:Courage
daring to attempt difficult things that are good strength not to follow the crowd, to say no and mean it and influence others by it being true to convictions and following good impulses, even when they are unpopular or inconvenient boldness to be outgoing and friendly

Month 3:Peaceability
calmness, peacefulness, serenity the tendency to try to accommodate rather than argue the understanding that differences are seldom resolved through conflict and that meanness in others is an indication of their problem or insecurity and thus of their need for your understanding the ability to understand how others feel rather than simply reacting to them control of temper

Month 4:Self-Reliance and Potential
individuality awareness and development of gifts and uniqueness taking responsibility for own actions overcoming the tendency to blame others for difficulties commitment to personal excellence

Month 5:Self-Discipline and Moderation
physical, mental, financial self-discipline moderation in speaking, in eating, in exercising the controlling and bridling of ones own appetites understanding the limits of body and mind avoiding the dangers of extreme, unbalanced viewpoints the ability to balance self-discipline with spontaneity

Month 6:Fidelity and Chastity
the value and security of fidelity within marriage and of restraint and limits before marriage the commitments that go with marriage and that should go with sex a grasp of the long-range (and widespread) consequences that can result from sexual amorality and infidelity

Month 7:Loyalty and Dependability
to family, to employers, to country, church, schools, and other organizations and institutions to which commitments are made support, service, contribution reliability and consistency in doing what you say you will do

Month 8:Respect
for life, for property, for parents, for elders, for nature, and for the beliefs and rights of others courtesy, politeness, and manners self-respect and the avoidance of self-criticism

Month 9:Love
individual and personal caring that goes both beneath and beyond loyalty and respect love for friends, neighbors, even adversaries and a prioritized, lifelong commitment of love for family

Month 10:Unselfishness and Sensitivity
becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered learning to feel with and for others empathy, tolerance, brotherhood, sensitivity to needs in people and situations

Month 11:Kindness and friendliness
awareness that being kind and considerate is more admirable than being tough or strong the tendency to understand rather than confront gentleness, particularly toward those who are younger or weaker the ability to make and keep friends helpfulness, cheerfulness

Month 12:Justice and Mercy
obedience to law, fairness in work and play an understanding of natural consequences and the law of the harvest a grasp of mercy and forgiveness and an understanding of the futility (and bitter poison) of carrying a grudge

Postscript
HOMEBASE: a national organization of parents who share common concerns, ideas, and objectives as well as values. What the organization is and how to get involved

Preface

One morning, while we were living in England, just about the time I began writing this book, I attended an assembly at the public school in Surrey where four of our children were students. A public school in Britain is actually a Church of England school, and the assembly that morning had to do with tolerance, individuality, honesty, and the fact that things are not always as they seem. Prayer and hymns were included in the assembly as they were every day in class. After the closing prayer the headmistress invited us all back the next week for the special Easter assembly.

The Church of England is not a strong force in terms of the numbers or ratios of people who attend church on Sunday, but it is the moral force that permeates every institution, from the smallest school to the Houses of Parliament, reminding all Britons of their values and of their morality.

I remember that I returned home from the school assembly that morning and found on our porch my copy of USA Today, the newspaper that I got once a week to catch up on the kind of American news and sports that I couldnt find in British newspapers. After I checked the basketball scores and the stock market, I turned to the editorial page, which just happened to be headed, THE DEBATE: VALUES IN SCHOOL.