Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Encouraging Children



My wife said to me yesterday that she was ashamed at all of the *lemonade stands* and kid *car washes* that she has zoomed past throughout her life.

I told I her that I felt the same and had just recently come to the same conclusion.

It would cost us essentially nothing to pay the fifty cents or two bucks for a Dixie cup-sized beverage or to have the lower 30 inches of our cars partially washed, but our incremental business might go a long ways towards encouraging future entrepreneurs.

This is precisely the type of *intellectual growth* thoughtful committed parents experience. Having the responsibility of children changes everything - far beyond just driving slower past playgrounds and whatnot. This is why *deferred adulthood* is such a human travesty.

Probably, everyone drives past these excited little peddlers....they get disillusioned....and end up in *marketing* or in Wall Street's *skim biz*!

From now on, I'm going to make sure to stop at almost every one.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good post. I never thought of it that way. Next time I see one, I'm there.

Slow out.

DU said...

The sense of responsibility you articulate so well is hard wired in your nature. It goes hand in hand with your passion for home schooling.

36. The task of giving education is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, "since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children. Hence, the family is the first school of those social virtues which every society needs." FAMILIARIS CONSORTIO JOHN PAUL II