My Brilliant Children

Most mothers will tell you their kids are everything to them. They are completely invested in raising healthy, happy people who approach the world with optimism, enthusiasm and good morals.

I am no exception. I think my boys are the smartest kids on the planet (they are) and they’re pretty cute too. The best part of being a mother to smart children is that they teach me things that I maybe once knew but have long since forgotten. Like how to embrace a sunny day as a gift. How to get right down in the sand and not worry about how to get the sand out of your bathing suit later. Or how to really enjoy ice cream and not worry so much about chocolate stains. Or that some TLC and a kiss, along with a brightly colored bandage, really can fix a boo-boo.

So I very much enjoyed this blog post from Fast Company written by Tom Stern, whose blog posts I intend to peruse after posting this entry. He marvels at how a man raised and skilled in a dog-eat-dog cutthroat business world managed to raise ethical children who won’t even take advantage of an opportunity to sneak into a second theater for a double-feature movie without paying for a second admission ticket.

I do think we inadvertently teach our children ethics we don’t necessarily remember to adhere to ourselves. Now the question is, how do we teach them to hold onto them when they hit the “real world?” That is a challenge I’m not sure I know how to tackle, but it is certainly food for thought. Learn by example? From our children? Novel concept, but quite possibly our best chance.