If you want to make the world a safe place, engage with your children. Be a beacon of safety. Be the example of responsibility and integrity the world needs.
We must protect our children—and by “our children”, I mean ALL children. I don’t mean we should shield them from the evil of the world. Rather, I mean we need to give them the skills to confront evil.
Children need to know there is good in the world—no matter how bad the world is around them. They need to know they are loved and accepted. They don’t need to know that they are perfect—they are not. They don’t need to the delusion that the world is going to be good to them. They just need to know that someone cares.
We must set higher standards for our youth. They don’t need “safe places”. They need to be safe. They don’t have to believe that everyone loves them. They just need to know that someone loves them. We need to expect more, not less, out of our youth.
Failure and disappointment are a healthy part of growing up. We are damaging a generation by leading them to believe that they are entitled to anything that they have not earned. It is harmful to our society to raise our children with the expectation that everyone will treat them the way they want to be treated.
Nonetheless, we must teach our children to love others—to respect others. We must teach our children to stand for the oppressed—and we must teach them by example. “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). We can’t preach this on Sunday and not live it on Monday.
There is much discussion on social media about legislation and security measures to protect our children in school. In the short-term, these measures are necessary. In the long-term, they will do nothing to make our children safe. Evil will always find its way. If our children are to be truly safe, we must enable them to make themselves safe.
The greatest problems facing us, today, are Spiritual. Thus, the solutions are Spiritual. By “Spiritual”, I don’t mean that our problems are a “religion”, “sin”, or even “God” thing. The Spiritual problems of our society stem from humankind growing increasingly entitled and alienated. We are failing to teach our children social skills. Worse, we are not allowing them the freedom to develop these. In allowing them the freedom to hurt and be hurt, we open the door to see better what they need.
I believe our schools have become overly protective. Just as we are learning that excessive use of antibacterial soap has been detrimental to our immunity, I believe we are going to come to see that our efforts—albeit well-meaning—to shield kids from teasing and bullying are leaving them weakened to the realities that face them as adults. Shielding them from failure is setting them up to be devastated by the rejection they will at some time face in life. I don’t want for any child to be teased or bullied. I wish that every child could be on the winning team, but that is not reality. What is real is that we will fall in life. What is real is that falling is okay. What is real is that every child is worthy of love and needs to experience love.
If we want our schools to be safe, we must look for the patterns that indicate that a child is hurting. We need to teach our children to look for these patterns, to be welcoming, and to be strong enough to stand for those who cannot stand for themselves.
We need to arm teachers and coaches—not with guns—but with the skills to recognize when a child is in need and to recognize the leaders who are willing to stand in and step up—and let them stand. Moreover, each of us needs to accept OUR responsibility to change the world for the better.
Carpe momento!
“What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day, and altering the trajectory of our world.”—Glennon Doyle Melton*
*https://www.rd.com/advice/parenting/stop-bullying-strategy/#.WnFlnKwVoBA.facebook