Silence is never a show of support. But in the light of all of the horrible events that are occurring both in the United States and the rest of the world, I feel I am beginning to run out of useful things to say. I am shocked. I am horrified. I am appalled. I am deeply saddened for our broken world. The educator in me is always looking for a solution, something to help this not happen again. So here is my humble suggestion; I think our country and the rest of the world need to sit down, have a family meeting and create some house rules.
Our house rules started because my children were in week six of summer vacation and had spent way to much unstructured time together. They had begun to fight, hit and be mean to each other. Out of frustration, I had begun to yell. One day I looked around my house and thought, is this what I want for my children? The answer was no. So we sat down in front of our fireplace with a piece of paper and a marker and had a talk.
What I discovered that day was that my children inherently knew how they should be behaving. They knew the kind of person I wanted them to be. Our house values were in line, we just needed to take the moment to be reminded of what mattered and recommit to our common purpose. So we created four simple rules and consequences.
Rule 1: We listen when others talk.
Rule 2: We play together and take turns. What we have is ours and not mine.
Rule 3: We talk in calm, quiet voices.
Rule 4: We help each other.
And then we signed the paper, committing to spending our days trying to do right by our family. Since my children are small, I added an incentive to our new rules. Every time they are caught being good, they get to put a bead in the jar. Eventually that jar will be filled and a reward will be earned. Right now they are so excited to do good so that they can see the physical result and look at how that one act of kindness is helping fill a previously empty jar. They have returned to the kind, helpful versions of themselves and the tenor of my house has changed.
As I sat and pondered all the horror that is currently occurring in the world, I couldn’t help but think that every community needs to sit down and make some house rules. We need to be reminded of the things we should be doing and then have someone catch us in the act. Daily on Facebook and in the mainstream media we are negatively reinforcing the horrible acts of violence people are committing all over the country while thousands of good deeds go unsung. Let’s give our children examples of the goodness that still exists in the world so that they have something to follow, the shoulds instead of the should-nots. Let’s positively reinforce the right instead of reinforcing the wrong. So that if our children accidentally open our Facebook feed they will see that kindness, openness, fairness is newsworthy and evil deeds are worth looking at twice.
Mr. Rodgers said “When I was a boy and would see scary things on the news my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers- so many caring people in the world.”
Maybe if we all made our house rules and day by day added beads to our jars, we could change the world for good. Our current approach is certainly not working so maybe it is time to sit down with our pens and papers and try something new.
