We talk a lot about mentoring at Scio. That’s because we truly believe that the best education is found through self-motivated guidance and mentoring. A student who desires to learn will learn better and faster with a guide to lead her. How do you give your middle and high school students a mentor to follow? How do you be a good mentor for your children?
What’s the first step?
I believe the first step to mentoring your children is to model for your kids a healthy christ centered adult life. In short, do stuff in your life that you want your kids to do in their adult life. If reading is something you emphasize as important for your children to do, then you need to be reading as an adult. If you claim to be too busy to read, then the message you send is that reading actually isn’t important.
It’s the same old mantra, ‘more is caught than taught’. It’s why we bring our children to church with us, and don’t just drop them off. It’s why we involve them in grocery shopping, paying the bills, filing paperwork, cooking, cleaning, and every other ‘adult’ task. It is how they learn.
How do we teach our children to pursue learning as a lifetime endeavor? How do we teach our children to take time to read the bible? How do we teach our children to pray?
When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, He answered with a prayer. He modeled how to pray. Jesus spent hours praying. That is how He taught them to pray.
- If we want to teach our children to be lifelong readers, then we need to show them how to fit reading into a busy adult life.
- If we want to teach our children that prayer and bible study is important, then we need to make prayer and bible study a part of our lives.
- If we want to teach our children to play an instrument and create music, then we need to model how to include music in our lives.
We want better for our children than the 9–5 rat race, and that means modeling what that better is in our own lives. We are our children’s first mentor.