No parent ever appreciates being told they are bad parents. But we all appreciate advice on how to be a better parent. You love you kids as much as I love mine, and in my eyes I’m a good parent who wants to be better. In real life we often forget to do things we know we should but you have, on average, 18 years to teach your children the basic skills they need to succeed in life. And to be good people. We teach our kids things like:
- Respect for others
- Being responsible
- Being honest
- Obeying rules
- Understanding what is fair
Those are the obvious parenting jobs, if you ask me. What I mean is that if you have two or more kids sooner or later they will have a disagreement. Sometimes the kids don’t get along for months. We teach them values to help them resolve conflicts and enjoy life. But what about the other lessons we should be teaching our kids, too? I can think of a few I’ll have to practice a little more going forward. Here are my 5 things that every family should teach their children (and probably don’t teach enough).
1. Family History
Raising a family is hard work, but as parents we want our children to be successful throughout life.
I remember asking my parents where they came from when I was young. But we don’t have a family Bible with all the names. I wrote up a genealogy somewhere when I was a kid but I lost it or threw it away. Or maybe my Mom has it packed away somewhere, ready to show me one day when she is feeling nostalgic.
Our littlest one asked us where we all came from a few months ago. She’s not ready for the facts of life but I was tickled that she was curious at so young an age. I’ll enjoy teaching her about our family when the time is right. And maybe she’ll take an interest in genealogy.
Learning about your family history should be a fun summertime project for any family. So we should teach our children to study family history. If nothing else, that makes history come to life for kids. They can read about it in school but maybe showing them your own family has a history will help the kids feel like they are living it.
My parents participated in protests when they were kids. They were a part of living history. I’m proud of them for taking a stand for what they believed in. We’re teaching our kids to do the same thing.
2. Family Medical History
This isn’t very different from learning about the family history, but it’s different enough that I think it deserves its own category. My grandmother used to tell us small things about her relatives. I don’t remember them all. One aunt had cancer. Another aunt was depressed. One of my uncles lost a finger in an accident.
Family medical history could become important one day. Unfortunately, that’s one of those things you never think to pass on until everyone who could tell you something important is gone. There are good reasons for us all to know our family medical histories. Our oldest son is of an age where he won’t care about family medical history, but I’ve been wondering when and how I should pass on to him what I know.
I don’t think there is ever a right time. My wife suggested we write a letter for our kids and put it in our important papers box. That way if anything happens to us they’ll at least know what medical problems they may inherit from both sides of the family. And one day if they need to know these things, we won’t have to wrack our memories.
3. How to Manage Health on a Budget
Maybe I should say we want our kids to know how to stay healthy. It should be common sense but considering how much junk food everyone eats, none of us really appreciates what it means to “stay healthy”.
This is an area where my wife and I have been conscientious. As young parents you deny your kids all the sweet things you enjoyed in your youth. But somewhere along the way we allowed the snacks to sneak into the house. It just happened. Now when I look around the kitchen there are bags of chips, cookies, and everything else I swore I would deny my children for their own sake when I first became a Dad.
The best time to manage your health is when you’re healthy. Eating well and getting enough exercise should be life-long habits. We should teach our kids better so they never have to do research on how to improve their health on a budget. The fact there is a website that teaches you how to get healthy when you have little to no money is sobering. Many people who lose their health also lose their incomes, and they can’t afford health insurance.
Don’t take your kids’ good health for granted. We don’t even know if they’ll have health insurance in 10-15 years.
4. The Benefits of Home Recycling
Everyone can help save the world a little bit at a time by not creating more trash. We’re inevitably going to throw things away. We contribute to the problem every time we flush a toilet or wash the dishes. You cannot help but create more waste. But why do it needlessly?
These are habits we should be teaching our children so they pass on good habits when they become parents. My parents believe in recycling. I remember sorting plastics from glass throughout my teen years. They still do it but I don’t. What happened? I took a job in a city that doesn’t have a community recycling program. They have a local for-profit recycling center but I’ve never used its services.
If we want our cities to adopt recycling programs we must use them. And we need to pay for them, too. I guess the expense of recycling is why communities are cutting back on services. But it’s important that our children understand the benefits of home recycling. I’m not asking my kids to grow up and become hippies, but I should ask them to think about what they do to the environment.
If we could all get off this planet and find a new home in space, I’d vote against that. Humanity hasn’t learned its lesson about global warming and pollution. We’d just ruin another planet if we left today. We should really teach that lesson to the next generation.
5. How To Manage Money Better
This is the obvious life lesson that every family misses. We all regret not knowing how to handle our money better. But who should have taught us? I didn’t learn any of that when I was in high school. And my college didn’t include money management in the core curriculum. We had to learn it on our own as we started a family.
Now my parents, being the late hippies they were, always lived a frugal lifestyle. But I don’t remember ever sitting down with them and having a long conversation about how to manage finances. The first time I learned how to write a check was when the bank manager who opened my account showed me. I must have watched Mom write a million checks but I never paid attention to what she was doing.
The government provides us with some tools to help kids learn how to manage money. Check out this site for kids on money management. That’s a good idea. But I wish the schools taught a basic money management course in high school. That’s the best time to bring our children up to speed because they are earning money through allowances or jobs.
Come to think of it, my parents did suggest I open a savings account when I got a summer job one year. But I never got around to it. They didn’t pressure me, and I’m glad they didn’t pressure me. But I think I would have appreciated learning more about money at an earlier age.
Conclusion
Every family passes on some special wisdom to its children. You may have shared some of these ideas with your kids already. But if you’re like me then you’re already thinking about how you can be a better parent. Your parents surely loved you and did the best they could, but no one handed my parents a manual for how to be the best possible parents. They had to figure it out on their own. And that is what my wife and I are doing.
Yes, we’ve read a lot of books on parenting. But they’re more like suggestions than manuals. The real life lessons in parenthood come from our parents. So the better we can be at parenting the better our children will be when it’s their turn.