Yesterday, a parent shared with me a letter posted on the blog site "Momastery," titled "For Adam." I shared this link with our teachers, and several of them have already read it with their classes. I think you might want to read it with your children at home, too. It's a beautiful expression of a parent's wish for her third grade son.
I think what I loved most about this letter is NOT the message about being a good bystander, and standing up for a child who is being bullied (although that is the main point of the letter).
What struck me the most was this statement:
We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care.
We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done.
We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.
Kind people are brave people. Brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.
This is so true. Especially here at St. Paul. Our children will be good readers and will learn Math and Science, and yes, even Religion - that's just who our kids are. They'll win awards, and most of them will, in fact, be the best at something. We have a building full of over-achievers (trust me on this one). What's much more difficult, for all of the adults who care about these precious children, is helping them to live out their call to discipleship - to be brave and kind and compassionate - and to act on this call.
