From the outside looking in, the presentation I gave at a local library one Saturday morning was just a tiny little affair with a very small impact. After all, there were only four other people in the room, and one of them was my dad.
The director of the library expressed her concern a day or two before the presentation date, asking if I’d like to reschedule since there was only one person on their sign-up sheet.
But no matter how small the audience would be on that beautiful Saturday morning in September, I had spent months preparing, and the idea of not seeing it through, not showing myself that I could do it, just wasn’t on my radar.
The thing is, I had other reasons for giving that talk. Reasons that weren’t dependent on the number of people in attendance, or even on whether the local homeschooling community considered my talk to be important, interesting, or informative.
My children were watching.
They had been watching for months as the idea for giving a talk on TJEd began to be a discussion topic between me and my husband. We’d talk about it now and then, more and more, and soon I knew I needed to do more than just talk about it. I contacted the library to see if they’d be interested in hosting it. They were, we set a date, and it became real. I started working on my plans, brainstorming what I would talk about, writing and re-writing, and there was lots of discussion. My children heard about the time I was putting in during the early morning hours, and saw me arrange my schedule on nights and weekends so that I could devote time to improving the presentation, over and over, section by section, until I felt good about it. I did practice runs at home in the family room, and my kids were there as my husband and I talked about what I needed to include, what might not be worthy. We had long debates over the top themes and our ideas about the main points I would try to impress on the audience. My kids became invested and offered ideas and suggestions. They cheered me on.
My kids watched me struggle and become dejected when I discovered a problem and couldn’t come up with the solution. They saw me share my unfinished project with extended family so I could get more feedback and use it to make the presentation stronger. They saw my passion, the work I was willing to put in, and when I gave the talk and came home to share the experience with them, they heard about the results. But more importantly, they lived alongside me as I set a goal and did what it took to reach it.
Our children are always watching (something that makes me cringe on a regular basis), and we are often doing our best teaching when we aren’t even thinking we are doing so. The example they find in our actions, in who we are and how we approach life, in the way we live it out and the things we choose to focus on are the most powerful tools we have as teachers, parents, and mentors.
I have found that my efforts to deliberately create inspiring lessons often fall short of achieving their goal. The “telling” just isn’t compelling. But what I am, how I do things, and what I am becoming: those things, which aren’t directly focused at my children, provide the most meaningful “lessons” and they aren’t missed. Children are attentive and perceptive and they don’t want to be lectured at or told why and how they “should” do things any more than adults do.
As a parent, I sometimes forget this truth and revert back to old habits of lecturing and telling. Sometimes when this happens, hypocrisy runs rampant. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve found myself giving a self-righteous “talking to” about what they did and what they should-have-done and a little whisper speaks in my mind, saying, “You do this too, in your own way. In fact, you just did this same thing yesterday.”
Of course, there are situations that are best served by telling, but even those situations aren’t effectively addressed if our own behavior contradicts the expectations we have for our children. When I get a sense that something’s “off” in my message or that there’s a whiff of hypocrisy in the air, I try to ask myself this question:
“Would I be willing to do what I’m asking my child to do right now?”
This is often a humbling question. It opens my eyes to a need for more grace and less judgment. After all, what is the relationship impact of expecting them to do something I don’t actually do myself? And if I think I can sneak it by, that they won’t make the connection or see the difference between what I’m saying and what I’m doing, I’m just digging a bigger hole for myself to deal with later. They know. They get it.
So, in my mind, this all comes down to a single question, a guiding question that can be used to keep my attention where it belongs, and help me ensure that I am staying on track:
“Is my example worthy?”
In other words, is it worthy of being emulated? Because it probably will be. Is it the best up-close and personal example of living well that I can give? Is it righteous? Is it principle-based?
We shouldn’t ask this question to beat ourselves up, or to set unattainable expectations that make us feel we can never measure up or that we are failing if we don’t meet them perfectly. (That never happens for any of us.) But the asking can have tremendous value for course correction. It gives us a guidepost that can help us see something we might have been missing, so we can gratefully get back on track when we become aware of it.
I believe it really is true that all change starts within ourselves. Mahatma Gandhi lived it, Stephen Covey called it the “inside-out approach,” and we know it in the TJEd community as “You, Not Them.” It certainly isn’t the only way to inspire growth and development, but it seems to be among the most powerful methods we can use. Although it might feel counterintuitive initially, we really can help the people we care about most when we go to work on ourselves instead of attempting to change them. Instead of focusing on what someone else is or is not doing, we consider and take on our own choices and habits.
We might start by asking questions like these: What would I like to do differently? What would I like to know that I don’t know today? What books have I always wanted to read? What area of my life is in need of improvement? What interest have I set aside because I felt I didn’t have the time? How would I like to help others and what do I need to learn or do in order to begin helping? What is holding me back in my life and what would it take to overcome it? Let’s give ourselves permission and go after it!
Does this sound like it could take some time? And maybe it could require a focus on ourselves and our own learning and development, perhaps at the expense of our kids? If it feels selfish to you to pursue your own development, consider the tremendous gifts you can give your children by being an engaged, curious, passionate, interested person who is living a life of meaning, involved in things that matter to you. Imagine all that can be “caught” by your children as they watch and learn from you as you share your enthusiasm, your joys, your challenges, and your victories. The fact is, in my own experience, the periods in my life when I’ve been the most engaged in my own learning, growth and development have served to increase the engagement in learning, growth and development throughout the entire family. It doesn’t seem to take away from others, it actually appears to give more all around.
Showing our children what it looks like to set our sights on a challenge, stick with it even when it gets tough, and come out on the other side (potentially changed by the experience), is a powerful way to provide family leadership. And guess what? It doesn’t matter if we fail. I fail all the time, and when I do, it means I get to teach different lessons. They may not be the lessons I saw myself demonstrating, but they are usually just as important, sometimes more important. How does a person cope with disappointment when things don’t work out the way they hoped? Now what? What does “failure” really mean? What happened along the way, and what parts of my process contributed to creating the undesirable results that occurred? These are pretty great lessons too.
It can feel like a burden, to think about the power of our personal example, and the way our children learn so much more from what we do than from what we merely say. But it can also feel like an amazing opportunity, and a reason to live with intention and purpose that reaches beyond ourselves.
I’m convinced that it doesn’t matter what you choose to pursue, it’s that you are pursuing things that matter deeply to you. When we are engaged and enthusiastic, we tend to share that with the people around us. Our example will help others want to know more and become more, because they are inspired by us. This is leadership!
How have you seen these principles at work in your own life? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!
The Powell Family Learns 