What is your home like? What benefits to development (or detriments) does it provide to your children? Let’s take a walk through the home.

Mornings:

Are they calm and slow or loud and rushed? Do you allow children to wake up and gradually acclimate to their day or do you contribute to higher levels of cortisol by yelling and rushing?

Foods:

Are foods chosen intentionally that contribute to healthy food habits and exposure to different foods, textures, and cultures, or do you give in and feed only pasta, chicken nuggets, and pizza?

Clothes:

Does the clothing your child has in their closet represent a more subdued, appropriate, and humble learning opportunity, or does the clothing scream wealth and being ostentatious?

TV:

Do you limit TV viewing and make sure that your child is never exposed to violence, sex, or inappropriate behavior on TV, or are you desensitizing your child to believing that violence and bad behavior is acceptable and normal?

School:

Do you participate in school and synagogue activities showing how important it is to your family culture with pictures of such things adorning the walls or do you show that TV and other things take precedence?

Friends:

Who do you invite into your home? Are they kind and warm or do you argue and struggle with them? What is your child learning from your interactions with friends?

Mealtime:

Do you all sit together and engage in meaningful conversations or do you eat separately and rarely ask or allow children to participate in discussions?

Bedtime:

Do you provide a quiet and loving space to read books and gently soothe your children to sleep or are you already tired and grumpy and bedtime is no fun for anyone?

Culture:

What is the culture of your home? Do you endlessly discuss money and finances or do you also speak about how to aid others and how to share your wealth of money, time, and knowledge? Are your children learning that the culture of their home is one of positivity or negativity?

Consider what home means to you, your spouse, and your family….

What type of home do you want your children to remember? Do you want your children to grow up yearning to return home at every break and vacation or will they come up with excuses to avoid a return? What you create now will have long-lasting reverberations throughout all of your lives. 

Oh, what a world it can be!