{"id":506,"date":"2021-11-26T17:02:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-27T00:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/?p=506"},"modified":"2021-11-26T17:02:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T00:02:43","slug":"love-children-and-put-light-in-their-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/2021\/11\/26\/love-children-and-put-light-in-their-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Children And Put Light In Their Lives!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Every child generally has someone who acts in a parental capacity. But beyond parents, many people have some influence in the lives of other people&#8217;s children. If we have any connection with children, we should make it a priority to be a light in their lives, not a dark spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Being a light in the lives of children isn&#8217;t about always making them happy and giving them whatever they want. I&#8217;m not sure where to place that in terms of darkness vs. light, but if such things generate feelings of entitlement or of anger when they don&#8217;t receive them, I would say we&#8217;re looking at darkness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Instead, the light we can and should strive to bring into the lives of children are various things that help them feel hope and self-worth, things that help them to work well with others, things that help them form a positive outlook about their own lives and a caring attitude about people they come in contact with. Light in their lives also includes things that help them learn how to accomplish worthwhile goals and contribute to the well-being of their communities and society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While parents and guardians have the primary responsibility for the upbringing of children, every adult has at least some small part in how children around them turn out. We can&#8217;t look at children as &#8220;someone else&#8217;s problem.&#8221; Each child is a part of the society we live in. What other people&#8217;s children do will have effects on our culture and our communities. If we aren&#8217;t willing to make the effort to guide and protect children that we come in contact with, how can we blame anyone else for their neglect in caring for children?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some avenues where we can help keep light in the lives of children include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Protecting them from physical harm, as well as from harmful ideas, media, substances, and so on<\/li><li>Showing love and kindness toward them<\/li><li>Guiding them and teaching them what it means to be a good citizen and a good neighbor<\/li><li>Showing them a good example of how to behave in whatever setting they see you in<\/li><li>Supporting laws and funding that increase light and\/or reduce darkness in the lives of children<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are many choices we can make to bring more light into the lives of children in different ways and different places. We just need to care enough about the children around us to make the effort. We can contribute to good in our community by contributing to the well-being of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To help emphasize the contrast, some of the darkness that comes into the lives of children include such things as using threats of harm or using intimidation, manipulation, harshness, etc. to force them to do what you want. It includes using a child to accomplish your own goals that have no benefit to the child or, even worse, put the child at some sort of risk. Those of us who are adults should do our best to avoid these dark behaviors when dealing with children (and really, we should generally avoid them altogether).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Remember, children are the next wave of our culture. What we put into them is what we put into our culture and it will become what surrounds us. Let&#8217;s make things better by how we interact with children&#8211;light up their lives with goodness!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every child generally has someone who acts in a parental capacity. But beyond parents, many people have some influence in the lives of other people&#8217;s children. If we have any connection with children, we should make it a priority to be a light in their lives, not a dark spot. Being a light in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[38,40,228,226,227,117,224,205,209,207,225,229],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","tag-child","tag-children","tag-example","tag-guide","tag-guiding","tag-love","tag-parent","tag-parenting","tag-raising-children","tag-raising-kids","tag-teach","tag-upbringing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightwardbound.org\/Main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}