Have you noticed that some things are easier to teach than others? For example, it’s easy to teach a kid good manners – please and thank you, don’t pick your nose, and cover your mouth when you cough. Even when it’s not so simple, like if you’re children are strong-willed or learning disabled, there’s lots you can do through repetition and consistency to train them.

But what about the more difficult stuff, like abstract concepts and esoteric issues?  Here is a list of compelling issues that I am struggling to teach my own children:

• Faith. Since I struggle with my faith on a daily basis, it’s difficult to teach my kids, especially when I embrace the more abstract concepts but have difficulty or reject dogma.  It’s something I feel is very critical, especially since I believe that faith helps you through the kind of challenges my learning disabled children no doubt face. I did find Parent University: Teaching Faith to our Children” to be a helpful article and embroiling faith into the everyday is something I do, but I’d like my 6 year old to learn more about God, as I know Him.  What I have done is taught her the “Our Father” and try to tell her nightly that God made her.  Little baby steps, I think, may be the only way.
• Diversity. This is going to be covered in school, but I worry because my daughter will be learning that she has Down syndrome. It’s not something we’ve discussed with her, much less discuss the diversity of others.  I have no idea how to approach this.  Amelia doesn’t speak much, so I’m a bit concerned that the day they do this speech, she will be a little freaked out.  I honestly didn’t find too many resources about teaching kids who have disability about their disability, other than to be honest and positive.  I suppose this is a good area of experimentation for me, and of course, future blogging. This video is a great one for all parents to watch as well:
  What I Would Want a Mother of a Typical Needs Child to Know

• Respect. I teach them self-control, but I’d like them to understand that respect is more than just that. I’m a firm believer in learning something because you understand the value of it.  It’s not enough to stop hitting your sister, you have to want to stop hitting her. This great list of 10 Tips on Teaching Respect to Children would be more effectual if I can get my kids to discuss and understand emotions.  I just received a new toy  called Feeleez, designed to teach kids about various emotions with pictures.  Perhaps that will help.  (I’ll be reviewing very soon on Mom-Blog.)
• Pride – with balance. It’s easy to get learning disabled kids to be proud of their successes, but you don’t want it to tip over into self-absorption.  Personally, I believe the pride is at the heart of most misdeeds; however, appropriate self-esteem is the flip side of pride.  it can be a tightrope to walk for a grown up and much more so for a child.  Too much pride can blow up into selfishness, which can lead to lots of undesired kid behaviors or this distorted perception of entitlement that is so rampant in kids today.  The resources I found on this topic were numerous, so I will leave you with Scholastic’s “Too Much of a Good Thing?

There are no easy answers here, but remember to encourage your child as much as you can, model what you want to see in him, and keep your eyes and ears open for good tips on teaching your kid about the important things in life.

What are the “hard things” you struggle to teach your children? What resources have you found that have helped? Share them in the comments.