Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient. This is a mantra that my wife uses when teaching both our kids and the kids in her classes in Sunday school. It's a philosophy she's come up with in order to help our munchkins to make judgments when interacting with others, or (and is more often the case) to explain why they're in trouble when we talk to them after an incident. In essence what she's trying to put forth in language that small children (3-8 years old) can grasp is:
Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient.
Be Kind -- Play nice with others, don't be mean to them, treat others just like you'd want them to treat you.
Be Safe -- Play, work, interact in such a way that you burn off energy and enjoy things without putting yourself or others in harm's way. Accidents happen, but do what you can to minimize the potential for injury. Things like throwing rocks, running down hills, going into the street all have high potential for injury - so please don't do those things.
Be Obedient -- There are adults in your life that have experience above and beyond what you as a 3-8 year old have, and they see things that you might not. If they care enough to correct, teach, direct, and/or warn you -- they're not doing it for the glory of correction -- they're doing it to better you and keep you safe and protected, and ultimately to further your growth.
Now, I know that this is what she means when she uses that particular phrase: Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Obedient. I can appreciate that those words are simple enough to be understood by small children, for the most part. Whether they listen or not is a different story, but that's a different direction than the one that I'm currently on. My thoughts though, are not that this particular mantra is wrong, but that it's not quite right. Those particular words, although they sound good and most would not argue against them, when being ingrained early in a child, can lead thoughts away from more creative and potential growth endeavors in teenage years and adulthood - without the child really knowing why.
Unfortunately, there's not a similar thought bubble or catch phrase that works as well that encompasses my changes to that mantra, because a more mature understanding would be required, but here's my adjustment to her saying:
Be Empathetic, Be Aware, Be Respectful.
Be Empathetic: Know your feelings, and understand that other people have feelings too, and know that your actions can impact their feelings in both a positive and negative way, and do your best to make their interactions with you be as positive as they can be - without sacrificing honesty and integrity. One can be kind without going outside of their comfort zone to actually relate to how the other person is feeling, and it can have overtones of insincerity. But it's very hard to be empathetic without coming out of a personal comfort zone, and it's far more sincere and relatable, and more powerful in building the trust and friendship between two people, whether on the playground in a sandbox, or over a coffee at the local hangout, or across a meeting table trying to negotiate business.
Be Aware: Know your environment, whether physical, business, social, or intellectual. Familiarize yourself with the potential risks that surround you, and acknowledge them for what they are, and figure out how to counter or minimize them as much as you can, but do not fear living because of them. Experience, Experiment, Encounter, and Grow -- and all of these will further your Awareness, so it will be a constant cycle. Safety sounds good to most normal people, but progress is not safe, risk is not safe, change is not safe, and honestly life is not safe. If we have our kids key off of the word "be safe", it will eventually mean more than what we originally might be using it to mean. But awareness is a concept that allows for growth, allows for change, allows for a dynamic life while adjusting for the amount of "risk" that the individual is comfortable with.
Be Respectful: Know who is interacting with you, and their relationship to you. There are those in the world who deserve respect due to position, due to title, or due to connection. There will be others that you will come to respect due to who they are as a person. Both will have valuable input into your life, whether in a teacher-student role, mentorship role, or job/profession role. For people in positions of power, such as teachers, police, employers, politicians -- know the difference between respecting the position versus respecting the person. There are very knowledgeable people who should be respected due to their accomplishments and role in society, even if there is little that could be deemed respectable about their personal life. Conversely, there are people who are great mentors and who develop great respect in life due to the way they carry themselves and their personal integrity, even though they may not be in a profession that normally engenders great respect. In either case, everyone has something to teach, something to offer, and as such is deserving of respect.
Note: What the difference is between respect and obedience, at least in my eyes, is that when someone is respected - they will naturally engender obedience. To require obedience implies a turning off of responsibility for critical thinking -- don't think about what I'm telling you to do - just do it. In a way, requiring obedience is actually easier because it doesn't require the one teaching/making demands/putting forth the plan/barking orders to justify or explain why they are making the request/demand/whatever. It does streamline processes, because it works on an action-reaction model that works in areas where excess critical thinking isn't required or desired. If every decision is actively questioned at every point in the process, especially from every element in a large organization, it can be a drawn out process to get anything accomplished. However, if critical thinking is removed from every level of a hierarchy, and blind obedience is required - flawed and/or potentially harmful decisions might be enacted without the proper checks and balances in place to protect both the organization making the decisions as well as those who would be directly impacted by the decision.
So, the challenge is for me to figure out a way to get these rather grown up concepts simplified to where young children can process them. Either that or stick with Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Obedient until they hit eight or nine, maybe ten -- then make the change to Be Empathetic, Be Aware, Be Respectful - because then they'd be more able to understand the difference, and their development would be not quite so "me" oriented. Maybe I'm overthinking it completely, but I look at some of the people I've worked with over the years, and I'm pretty sure that this change could do no more harm than what's already been done - and might improve things in the long run.
