Ten Important Things to Send to School With Your Child
Warning: these items are not listed on School Supply Lists. They aren’t found in stores, are not available online, and can’t be delivered in a box once a month by a subscription service. In other words, they can’t be purchased.
They must be taught over time. It is never too early to begin teaching them, and never too late to try.
I’d like to say the items on this list are carefully selected after diligent research and with input from multiple Ph.D. types who study children’s academic and social-emotional development. But that would be false. It has nothing to do with current popular theories. Instead, this list of ten qualities is taken from the top … of my head. My only qualifications are:
I’m a mom.
I’m a grandmother
I’ve worked in one capacity or another instructing, caring for, serving and observing children for more years than I am willing to admit in writing
In other words, I know kids.
And these are the qualities I hope my grandchildren have in their possession as they start another school year, and what I wish for any child attending school anywhere, at any age.
1. Self-control
Definition: The ability to control one’s actions, desires, and emotions.
In other words, the ability to spend day after day with people you don’t know, doing things you might not be good at, when what you really desire is to play outside all day long with friends you trust, doing things you know how to do, and never have to sit at a desk or walk single file.
Biggest obstacle in obtaining this quality: being allowed to do whatever they want to do, eat whenever and whatever they want to eat, and never have to do anything they don’t want to do.
2. Empathy
The ability to understand that the kid beside you, the one in front of you and the one behind you might be scared, or lonely, or hungry, and what it feels like.
Best method for teaching empathy?
Stories.
Read them, talk about them with your children.
Through stories, children experience what the characters are feeling, and so learn other people have feelings, too.
3. Curiosity:
An innate desire to discover and understand the why and what and when and where and how of the things that are and might be and have been.
Without it, there is no desire to learn. No intrinsic reward for the work learning requires.
Do everything you can to nurture your child’s curiosity in as many things as you can, by sharing and exploring your own curiosity with them.
4. Kindness:
The ability to treat others with friendliness and consideration.
When a person has to live in a room, day after day, with anywhere from 10 to 30 other people, kindness can make the day go by so much better for everyone, whether a person is on the giving or receiving end.
5. Resilience:
The ability to adapt and overcome difficult situations and setbacks including adversity, stress, hardship, misfortune, and trauma. It’s an inner strength enabling a person to bounce back.
Here’s something you probably already know: Growing up is hard. Learning is hard. Life is not easy.
The more we try to make life easy for our children, the less capable they are of dealing with it.
Check out this page from the Mayo Clinic about developing resilience.
6. Perseverance:
The ability to keep trying something even if you don’t understand it completely, aren’t finding immediate success, or don’t enjoy it. The only way a person can obtain this is through willpower, experience, and practice.
One common reason a child is not equipped with perseverance is because they are allowed to give up before the goal is reached, the task is done, or skill mastered. It might be due to adults or other children stepping in to do the work for the child when they’re struggling.
7. Respect and self-respect:
How does a child gain self-respect? By watching parents model it in their treatment of others and themselves.
Those things you say about others—your child hears.
And allowing oneself to be pummeled by a child verbally or physically teaches them the opposite. When we expect respect, it reminds us to act in such a way that we deserve it. Treating children with respect teaches them to expect it, too, and not accept disrespect from other people.
Want to see what happens when we don’t teach our children respect for themselves, other people, and property? Watch the news.
8. Confidence:
If only we could instill confidence in our children like giving them a multi-vitamin. It’s hard to be confident when they may not have discovered the thing they are good at yet.
And telling them they are good at something when they aren’t will just backfire. Kids are smart enough to rate their own ability when they compare it with other kids’.
It’s just another thing we can’t give to them, but need to provide them opportunities to acquire.
Basically, they learn it by trying a variety of endeavors and succeeding at some. Unless, of course we do everything for them. Or never allow them to take risks. Or never make them try and try and try until they get it right.
9. Hope:
It’s looking forward with confident expectation of good things happening, a feeling of possibility.
Children walk through the school door hoping…
to see old friends or find new ones, to have fun, to explore and discover something new or interesting, to be loved, respected, and to show people they are good at something.
They should be filled with hope.
If they hear you badmouthing the school, the teacher, the other children, or education in general, they’ve been robbed of it.
10. Responsibility:
It’s the gift you give a child when you trust them to complete a meaningful task. It’s what they gain from understanding that you believe they’re capable of performing the task, or caring for their belongings, or caring for something that’s alive, whether it’s a kitten or a tomato plant. It proves to them that they are worthy, and empowers them by teaching that what they do or don’t do matters.
I wish I could say that with these ten qualities, your child will be equipped to face whatever comes their way this school year, including a pandemic. But there are so many others just as valuable, and maybe more so. Like love, honesty, generosity, understanding, and optimism. Without a doubt, they are more important than brand-name clothes, a cool backpack, or fancy pens.
And just like math, reading and writing skills, they are not instantaneously acquired. In fact, I’m still working on developing some of these qualities in myself.
Are you?
Like I said: It’s never too late to try.
Want to add some other qualities? List them in the comments box below, and let’s talk about it.
