"All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:
Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Take a nap every afternoon. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the styrofoam cup -- they all die. So do we.
Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap.
Or, if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess. And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together." (Robert Fulghum "All I really Need to Know I learned In Kindergarten", Villard Books N.Y. 1988, pp. 6-8)
Isn't that something?
It's a touching, beautiful, and poignant piece because it is so profoundly true. We all know that the early years of a child are so important. Our attitudes, our personalities, our values, our habits, our principles -- perhaps above all, our self-esteem -- and to some degree, our IQ's, are shaped powerfully by what happens to us in the first years of early childhood.
So, what foundations are we to lay for the house we are building in our families. I recently came across a word from Sister Corita which I propose as an answer. Sister Corita is a Catholic nun who had an unusual ministry some years ago. I haven't heard of her in a long time. But back in the 60's and 70's, she was known all over the nation. She was an artist who designed and printed serographs – poster-like art that used common goods to grab our attention and communicate the Gospel -- Graphic drawings of loaves of bread, dancing trees, cans of soup combined with powerful words colorfully and dramatically presented witnessed to God's grace. Posters were her way of witnessing to God's grace. Her posters were very popular and communicated the Gospel in a mind-grabbing, heart- touching way. One of those posters carried this message: "There are three things that keep life from being so daily -- to make love, to make believe, and to make hope with the everyday common stuff and people around us."
Isn't that it? The answer to keeping life from being so daily -- but far more than that -- this is what mothers and fathers are to do with children in the home: Make love, make believe, and make hope.
1. Make Love.
2. Make Believe.
3. Make Hope.