Keynote Message Noted

Yesterday, as part of the statewide PTA convention I attended, Dr. Brent Top was the keynote speaker. He is a professor of church history and doctrine at BYU. He has also written several books and conducted many studies that focus on family life and family influence.

He spoke to several hundred people yesterday on the topic of helping our children acheive their highest potential. And since that is my goal in my real life too, I thought what he had to say was valuable.

He began by telling us the story of Michelangelo. He was once asked about the masterpiece carvings he created. Someone had asked him how he does that. He basically told them that he sees the finsihed piece within the stone and he just removes the unwanted parts.

He gave four suggestions we can try to help our children from a "rough cut" into becoming their own "masterpiece".

First, create a learning environment. He gave the example of seeds. Even if you plant them in the richest soil with all the amenities a lush garden could need, until the soil is warmed to its optimal temperature the seeds simply won't grow. Love acts as a root-starter and along with warmth and love, children need safety and acceptance and respect.

Then, they need guidance in developing a moral compass. Kids have a strong innate sense of right and wrong. But all around them the societal model contains priority shifts, justification, and motivation to do whatever it takes. He emphasized that morality is not religion. Morality cannot be relative. He also told us that parents need to be parents, not buddies to their kids. And as we are consistent with discipline and punishments, respect can grow. Kids, especially the teens in his study, want boundaries from their parents.

Third, we must help instill a sense of empathy and compassion for others. While we should value academic achievement or athletic prowess, we should also value empathy. Without that characteristic our children cannot reach their full potential. He told of a study he did with people who had near-death experiences. That idea that your life flashes before your eyes seems to be universal, but the things that are recalled are more the feelings that your actions affected in others. So how we treat other people really counts.

Fourth, we must teach our kids to render service to others. This is empathy and compassion in action. As parents knowingly or unknowingly foster their children's idea that it is all about them, and eventually that becomes very restricive and ultimately self-destructive. Dr. Top mentioned some thing that really struck me here. He said, "Those who have true joy look out of the windows in their souls rather than into mirrors." The more we focus on others, the more we gain. He taught the Principle of Indirection--like a boomerang. We put effort into one area and the benefits come from another direction.

Helping children achieve their potential requires effort. Modeling the behavior we want our children to follow requires determination and purpose from us.

I appreciated this more this week, as we had a blow out with The Girl earlier this week. Her big AP test was Friday and I am sure she was feeling stress about wanting to do well. But we have told her from the start that we didn't expect her to score a perfect "5" but a passing "3" would be just great.

However, one girl in her class continually makes everything they do a competition. She wants to rub her percieved superiority in the other kids' noses--even to the point of telling the teacher he is wrong in a very disrespectful way in front of the class. The Girl doesn't care to deal with this girl like that. But this classmate, in my opinion, is at the core, jealous of The Girl for her acceptance and well-roundedness. And she proceeds to become more and more confrontational when The Girl is getting what this classmate really wants.

This classmate is all focus and intensity--she really has limited social skills with kids her own age. And consequently few friends really want to hang out with her--can you blame them? But I know that The Girl is biting her tongue more often than not. I have told her she needs to be kind to this classmate, but needn't try to be her best friend. But it eats her up when she sees the inconsistancy theis classmate displays between prefessin her perfection and treating people around her so badly.

As the test approached this week, The Girl's anxiety peaked too and she acted out disobediently, and got grounded. My job as a parent, according to Dr.Top is to help her develop and achieve her potential. But, boy, that is a hard job.