Teach Your Children Well

For the most part, I am not someone who is up on the times when it comes to best selling books. I’m more of the person who reads things several years later, after the movie has been made and the marketing craze has ended. For some reason, I am turned off by things that are overly popular and need an extra nudge after that has happened.

With that said, I just finished reading The Help. At first, I wasn’t interested in reading it, but the movie looked like something I would watch after it was released to DVD. Then, a friend, suggested that I read it because it’s a great book for mothers and daughters. Well, since I am about to have my first child and she is going to be a she, I was hooked!

The beginning was a little slow for me, however, it quickly became pages I didn’t want to put down. In my opinion, it’s a fabulous read; especially if you have children. There are lessons in there that I find are essential to what I want to teach my kid[s]. Mostly, it’s about treating people right, and by right I mean by the golden rule. If you haven’t heard of that one, it’s basically “treat others, as you would wish to be treated, yourself.” Now, this seems like it would be easy to instill, but throughout all these years I have met more people that demand to be treated one way and go right out with the opposite attitude towards how they are supposed to behave. It’s maddening. Then we have the lesson of instilling confidence and morals. These can easily be cited in the most well known quote from the book:

You is Kind

You is Smart

You is Important

~ Aibileen

For me, this is essential for our children to learn. Simple, yes — but very hard to learn and even harder to hold onto as we venture through life.  I don’t have answers for how to do this, but I do hope that I am not the only one who finds these to be life lessons that are some of the most important.