My mom knew me well. So well, in fact, that as I left for college she outfitted me not only in the latest fashions for my body but she also armed me for life by the gift of a ceramic “book, a slightly worn piece that had resided on the kitchen window sill as long as I had memory. She knew me well. The “Serenity Prayer, in faded gilt script has resided with me ever since, on dorm dressers, in apartment alcoves and finally, on my own kitchen windowsills.
The “Serenity Prayer, known to millions, was written by Reinhold Niebuhr, in the early 1940s. In original form it reads, “God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. It speaks to important, even life-saving, skills everyone who lives life successfully must develop. My mom had already seen to it that I had the models for courage, for wisdom, acceptance and serenity that I needed to learn those skills. The prayer, given to her by her mom, was to serve me as a reminder to use these skills.
How do children develop the strengths they will need to become successful, happy, contributing adults? Where do the models for learning courage, serenity, wisdom and acceptance come from? Parents, obviously, are an important source. Children who live with kindness become kind, children who live with acceptance learn to love and children who live with anger become bitter. Beyond parents are aunts, uncles, grandparents and teachers, all who serve as examples for children to copy. Uncles who always have time for nieces and nephews teach them most of all the importance of having a caring special person who thinks they are important. There are others, those important members of our “extended families, the friends so close our children call them “aunt,, or “uncle,, and daily interact in our lives and from whom our children take their cues about the kinds of adults they will become. Our children watch and copy ... and they copy everything, good or bad.
Adults are the mirrors for what children will alter become; good examples are critical. By watching grown-ups cope successfully with joblessness, sorrow, hard times, death, disaster, children learn that adverse circumstances can be overcome, changed or accepted. By observing adults who look beyond imperfection of body to the inside perfection of spirit, who love the unlovable and forgive the unforgivable, children learn to do the same. Young people copy the way adults react to difficult situations ... by blaming or by problem solving. When their own tough times come, they remember and reach for the strengths that were planted in years past by the strong adults about them. They cannot use what we have not given them.
