If you were asked what means more to you than anything in the world? What would you say? What would almost anybody say?
I just returned from spending almost a week with the Boy Scouts on a High Adventure in the San Juan Islands. Camping, hiking, cliff jumping, kayaking, swimming and adventure in record-breaking heat.
It was a marvelous time and what made the experience so great was that my son, Scott, spent the time with me as my tent buddy. Each night around the campfire (non-blazing because of a burn ban) we spent time with 15 scouts discussing morals, family, honesty, integrity, and many of the essentials skills and attributes that make up a successful person.
The Boy Scouts of America is a system designed to train and teach young boys to become young men that contribute positively to society.
Last weekend I rode the Courage Classic. It’s a bike ride to raise money for abused children through Mary Bridge Hospital. We rode our bikes over Snoqualmie pass, Blewitt pass, and Steven pass in three successive days.
The fundraising is for children whose parents have broken systems or who have been abused by someone whose parents have a broken system. So much unnecessary pain and misery because of a broken family.
The family is the basic unit of society. In both my Scout adventure and my bike ride, the core ingredient to why I found so much joy and happiness was the family unit. If the family is broken, society suffers. Divorces, separated parents, abused children, missing children, and lost children take a heavy toll on our society.
The one common element I’ve noticed missing in society’s approach to curbing the casualty rate is education. There is no societal system designed to teach effective communication and parenting skills.
The home used to be the source prior to WWII, but since the advent of TV, the industrial revolution, and the invention of the microchip, the family unit has become individualized.
We no longer have a cadre of mentors and coaches to work with our children. Grandpa and grandma don’t live in the home. Aunts and uncles, older cousins and siblings no longer participate in the day-to-day teaching of our youngsters.
The very source of effective communication and parenting was lost when the family broke up and went to work in the factories. Mom and dad don’t have the time, the capacity, or the training to teach their children all that they must know. We have an abundance of information, but nowadays, children get most of their skills and perceived knowledge from other children.
Our houses are bigger and designed to allow each person to live alone with his/her electronics and very little interpersonal interaction.
Recently, on a trip to Vancouver BC, I jumped aboard the Sea Bus and sat next to a young lady coming home from work. I’m not very familiar with Vancouver and turned to ask her some questions. Her eyes were staring into space, her head was nodding up and down, and her ability to hear my question was muted by her ear-buds and I-pod.
It dawned on me that our sophistication is suppressing our ability to learn effective communication tools. Is it any wonder our children don’t listen to us? We’ve taught them to tune out so they use each other to master the skills of life and learn about intimacy, love, and growing up.
If you want things differently in your circle of influence, then learning how they did it prior to WWII might be a good place to start. The common denominator was a mentor or a coach. Mom and dad worked with each child for hours everyday and at night, over dinner, they talked some more.
They lived in a world of “Present-Tense Parenting.” Our society is too fast, too expensive, and too technology driven to bring everyone back into the home. The next best thing is to study and learn the skills necessary to effectively communicate with our family members.
It’s never too late. See the previous blog for a suggested start to your communications library.
Give yourself the highest probability of success by investing in your future.