You try to teach, you try to lead by example, and you wonder and wonder if you are being heard on a certain topic, and then ...
The Goods
My daughter has great values, and I admire her a lot. She is kind, compassionate, and artistic. She cares about animals and the natural world.
But she has this weakness, and I'm sure it's due to our failures of parenting. She absolutely loves the stupid plastic toys that pour over the ocean from China and then slosh around our neighborhoods, steadily losing their coherence and their pieces until they meet their fate, usually a face saving donation to somewhere like Goodwill so you can pretend that it's not going to the landfill (try not to look at the jumbled piles of junk as you drop it off).
If she has this addiction, it's because we have fed it and indulged it. Mea culpa without reservation or excuse.
In the last couple of years we have been talking more about where things come from and where they go. Important stuff, that might sink in over time. We have been demonstrating some (hopefully increasing) level of responsible buying, smaller quantities of stuff that will last longer.
So imagine when she told us a few weeks ago that for her tenth birthday, she wanted donations to our local humane society instead of presents. And then her friends came through with a lot of generosity and enthusiasm. $110 and a pile of supplies for animals in need.
It's a small thing, on the scale of concerns about our world. But for our little future leader, I think it was a big thing, choosing to give up the next stream of items for something she cares about.
Sometimes I think there is hope after all!
I hope you will take a moment to share your best, or most recent, proud parent moment.
Thanks for reading,