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| The Mystery within... |
Wisconsin Public Radio’s Larry Meillor show, “Dealing with Conflicts Between Your Kids,” featured Myrna Shure, author of “Raising a
Thinking Child,” and Sue Allen who organizes parenting classes to facilitate
getting children involved with their own problem solving. Although the discussion centered on younger
children, the comment was made whether you are two or ninety-two we like to be
able to think for ourselves in solving problems that affect us. Both Shure’s and Allen’s writing and work
left me hopeful for humanity since it teaches the very young to reflect on what
they bump into in life and think about how they might react.
Most poignant for me was a mother who called in during the
show with a tip for making summer vacation happier and more peaceful by giving
her young children summer journals to record their feelings each day, both the
good and not so good feelings, and found it helped them solve some of their own
problems. I thought it was such an
outstanding suggestion I went out and bought six journals. One for my daughter, son and his family all
ranging in age from 9 to 51 years old and gave them as party favors at my
oldest granddaughter’s 17th birthday dinner.
I put a note in each journal, which told a little bit about the radio
program, and how I hoped they would give this a try and wrote the following suggestions
for their 2016 summer journal:
--What feelings felt good in your day;
--What feelings didn’t feel good in your day and what you
might do about it.
I also wrote it would highlight the good times, and help them
figure out for themselves how they might react to the not so good times that
are all part of life and learning. I
mentioned that I wrote for three years each day when a lot of stuff didn’t make
me feel good and my writing helped me figure out what I could do about it.
“God Never Hurries” came out of those three years of writing
along with making me a more empathetic woman who learned how to make
life-giving decisions for myself.
Teilhard de Chardin was right about our humanity evolving
from our ability to reflect back on ourselves.
“What if we all learned from reflecting and writing about
the good and difficult in our days?”
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