Acceptance....

If there is one value I hope to instill in my children more than any other, it would be acceptance. Without acceptance of any amount, I think the world would be a whole lot scarier. I'm not blind to the fact that there is a severe lacking in the acceptance department by humanity as a whole, but I believe that at a fundamental level acceptance is a learned skill. It is not one that you are born with, but rather, taught to you at an early age, and formed and molded throughout your years. Like many other things, if acceptance is not a cornerstone in your parenting, your children will not have the self image and self respect required to make the life journey. Without getting all technical mumbo-jumbo on you, I will try to explain my point of view.

If a child is not taught that it is OK to be different from others, they will not only bully other children but will have internal thoughs of disrespect towards themselves. For example,  if Billy's different because he's bigger than the rest of the kids, then I must be different because I'm one of the smaller.

This seems to me to be one of the more crucial errors we as parents make. Children are not deaf; they hear us talking amongst other parents about these types of things. They hear our views and adopt them as our own. This is what I like to call "Parenting Fail".... And I'm no angel ... let it be known. With this in mind, think of how well they hear and SEE us as parents talking to or about each other? We all to often forget, through our adaptation to spoken language, that as a species, our initial language was BODY language. We don't always realize that what we say with our bodies speaks volumes more than what we say with our tongue. "Do as I say and not as I do" .... is garbage. Our children are much more basic than we are. They are still learning and developing their language, and are basically programmed to read our body language before they're able to fully understand our spoken language.

If we teach our children to accept love, we must teach them what an acceptable measure of love is. We must teach them that love is a gift that is given. Much like trust, Love can easily be broken. And without proper care and attention, Love will not heal properly. Accepting broken love is not acceptable. Does this make sense??
Our kids know when we are hurting. They see it in our faces, in the way we carry our bodies, as well as in the tone of our voice. We are unknowingly teaching our children it is acceptable to feel the way we feel. We are teachers, they are students, and we are teaching them to accept our acceptance of something unacceptable.

I know it may sound as though I am putting my jaded attitude towards love and marriage onto my children, but it was gonna happen anyway. Atleast in this way it is a gentle approach.