Dear Parents

As parents, guardians, and caregivers, we want our children to be kind, caring, resilient, and compassionate young people. We want them to be kind to their friends and classmates, polite and friendly toward adults, and excited about sports, the outdoors, and learning. We want them to face new challenges with courage and self-confidence, to resolve playground arguments in age-appropriate ways, and to value human connection above devices and screen time. We want them to watch films and listen to music that are wholesome and supportive of a developing young brain, mind, and heart. We want these things for our children, but we tend to forget that these traits and skills must be taught and instilled; they do not always develop spontaneously. So when we are informed that our child has made a culturally insensitive or hurtful comment to a peer, shocked a younger child with something seen on the internet, engaged in a “dissing battle” to see who could come up with the worst insult, or teased another child until they cried, we automatically feel cross or perhaps even defensive.

“My child knows better than that.” “There must be a misunderstanding because I didn’t raise my child that way.” The truth is, our children don’t always “know better” because they continuously need to learn what the correct behaviour is, and the onus is always on us to ensure that they are constantly developing the social, moral, and emotional skills we would like them to have. We tend to focus on the qualities of...

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