I hope you had a fun and relaxing Labor Day weekend. In our town, students returned to school this week, which got me thinking about the phrase, “everything I needed to learn, I learned in kindergarten.” For many of us, kindergarten taught us to share, to be kind, fair, compassionate and truthful–qualities that remain important no matter how old we are; qualities that we could practice more.
So many of the tools we learned in school are valuable throughout our lives. Some of the life skills we taught our daughters during their school years, they still use as adults. For example:
- Getting good rest. All of us function better when we’re well-rested.
- Eating nutritious meals and exercising.
- Normalizing first day jitters as we all can feel a little anxiety walking into a new environment. We like to be reassured that we’ll be okay.
- Having the right supplies (books, notebooks, pens, pencils) to support our learning tasks.
- Managing our time. Whether it’s an alarm clock or calendar, time management is a valuable tool.
- Carving out a workspace to complete homework.
- Knowing that home is a safe space to express their thoughts and feelings, to share the days’ experiences. All of us have good and bad days.
- Giving them the freedom to fail. They don’t have to like every subject, but they can give any subject their best effort.
- Developing perseverance by committing to and seeing through any extracurricular activities they’ve joined.
- Advocating for themselves. If your child has an issue with the teacher, listen to them. Make an appointment for you and your child to talk with the teacher.
- Most importantly, BE YOURSELF. Don’t compare yourself to others. All of us learn differently, and all of us were created with different gifts and abilities.
We need and want people to teach us, to listen to us, to help us feel safe, to give us room to fail and grow, to not compare us to others. We want to be valued, loved, heard and accepted. It also helps to be organized, to have the proper tools and support so we can pursue new opportunities. No matter how old we are, these things still matter. When our daughters were school aged, I was a stay-at-home mom. Today, many mothers work, and everyone in the household may have a different schedule. Help your kids to feel safe and to establish a routine. The greatest gift we can give our children and grandchildren is our daily prayer for them.
I’d love to hear about tools you learned during your school days that you still use today in the comments section.
Marie: Awesome information to share. Reminding us that our children first learn from us, the basics of what it means to be good and civilized human. We need to get this blog across social media!!
Yes, everything begins in the home. Our children appreciate and want guidelines and boundaries.
Such great advice Marie! Thank you.
Your welcome. Thank you for reading my blog.
Great Advise for new situations
Thank you.
Such good advice! Definitely reminds me of how we did these things with Chris over the years and what I shared with my students’ parents! I wish every parent could read this article of sage advice!
Thank you. I’m going to share it with the parents at Norwescap next week.
Thank you for the reminder how important school was for me. I was home schooled for a couple years. It taught me I can learn almost anything with the right book.
I’m happy it brought back good memories for you.