Once I thought, “What if I didn’t come home safely today?”
There’s so much I want to share with my children. Zachary (6) and Lucas (4) would never hear all the life lessons I want to teach. All the anecdotes I want to share. All the guidance I want to give.
And it made me very sad.
A letter from me to you
I began to pen letters from me to the boys. Something I prepared for just such an occasion. It morphed into a list of life lessons.
Then I thought, why save it?
I could begin to share my rules for a happy life right away.
Enter ‘The Wall’
The boys spend a lot of time in their rooms. Going to bed early, waking up early, time outs: all can be opportunities to leverage the real estate in the room for something positive.
On each boy’s bedroom wall is an illustration of each of the ten or so lessons in life I want to impart. I put them up one at a time. Months pass before I put up the next. And from time to time I ask, “What’s Rule #1?”
I just put Zach to bed. I gave him a quick quiz: What’s Rule #1? #2? He was able to give them all back to me, if not verbatim, the essence of each one. He gave color to them that went beyond what was on the page.
This “wall thing” is paying great dividends for us. I highly recommend it.
Good luck from a fellow Dad,
Joe Hage
What do you think of this idea? What would you put on your child’s wall?
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Other Dad-o-matic posts by Joe Hage:
Emploment opprotunities
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