Values, Matters of the Soul: Priceless Gifts to Children

Most of us want our children to have our values, but we don’t want them to have any of the negative experiences upon which we base them.

We certainly don’t want to inflict poverty or hunger or pain on our children, yet it was by living through just such maleficence that we gained whatever wisdom we may have.

And telling them to take our word for something is like nailing up “Wet Paint” signs. (Have you ever seen anyone not touch the paint to see if it really is wet?)

That leaves role-modeling, a particularly difficult task when it’s a perfect person we’re determined to mold.

The question then becomes: Is it possible to role-model intangible matters of the soul?

I suspect the answer is yes--and so do most of the readers who responded to our request to make a list of things that they wish they could pass on to their children.

“My hope is that my daughter would have some measure of the legacy I was left by my mother: a love of great music and a belief that a sense of humor can get you through anything,” wrote Sidney Gardner of Santa Ana.

“I was with my mother last December when (after a long battle with cancer) she finally died peacefully at home. I had been playing Brahms’ ‘Requiem’ for her in the last few minutes of her life.

“I had just thanked her for the music she had helped me love when she let go of life.

“Mother had been a church organist and a kindergarten teacher in Irvine who always had sheets of music on the piano that she used in teaching the children.

“I was surprised when I got to college . . . to realize how much I already knew about classical music just from listening to her old records.

“For my daughter, perhaps the clearest lesson about legacies is that the music I love was never ‘taught’ to me or forced on me--it was just there.

“Leaving values to our children may be the same--what lasts is what they see us valuing and loving and living with every day, rather than any great ‘lessons’ that we try to teach by lecturing or criticizing.

“I hope my daughter values music as I have for its capacity to remind us of what great gifts humans have been given to create beauty--and what a gift it is to be able to hear such beauty. . . . It is simply grace, from God, and to be valued as a pure gift. I hope she learns to be grateful for that kind of grace, in whatever ways it comes to touch her own life.

“Mother was also a very funny person, (laughing) as often at herself as the world around her. My daughter will need humor, as my mother did, to get through the hard times, to provide some distance from the worst temptation of our narcissistic times, (and that is to) take ourselves too seriously.

“These are the gifts I hope to leave my daughter, as they were left to me,” Gardner concluded.

Kathie Wolin Gardner (no relation to the previous letter-writer) of Laguna Niguel also believes that setting an example is more effective than a lecture.

She wrote that she had never given much “conscious thought” to the values she wanted to impart to her two daughters, “thinking that the manner in which we lived--the things that we did and didn’t do--imparted those beliefs and values.

“A few years ago, one of the girls brought a friend home from college. We were having dinner and chatting when he mentioned working on his old car . . . and that he was going to get his parts from a ‘Midnight Auto Supply.’

“I’d heard the phrase before, but Julie hadn’t and asked him where the shop was. He explained that he was going to buy parts that someone had ‘sort of appropriated.’

“ ‘You mean stole ? ‘ she asked incredulously. ‘Well, yeah, sure,’ he answered, seeming to become embarrassed at the stillness at the table. He left soon, and she never spoke to him again.

“I don’t remember ever specifically saying ‘stealing is wrong.’ When they were little, we talked about the concept of having to pay money to get things we wanted . . . and that there were things we couldn’t have because we didn’t have enough money for them.”

“But it was one of those moments (sometimes few and far between) when I knew I’d done some things right in raising my kids. They do know that stealing is wrong. And they do know that thieves are inappropriate friends . . . and that they want to be with people of similar values.”

As for myself, there are two intangibles I would choose for my children. The first would be compassion, the second a capacity for outrage.

Neither, it seems to me, would be of much use without the other. Having compassion alone would just lead to a lot of head-shaking and wondering what the world is coming to.

Having a capacity for outrage without compassion, on the other hand, would just result in a lot of desk-pounding.

Together, they are a potent force--the kind of force that historically has led to dramatic changes in our society. They form the basis for decent humanity.

And, like it or not, it all starts with the parents and the family.