Pastoral Care
Guide Your Children Toward Positive Fulfilment
Tips to improve your children’s sense of joy, hope, awe, purpose, and deep connection.
Have you thought about ways to help cultivate the character of your child? If you consider social and emotional learning skills as the engine that enables accomplishment, you might want to look at character as the steering wheel that gives kids a sense of direction.
"We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education". Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Might character be as worthy of our attention as academics, civic competencies, and artistic literacy — and perhaps be connected to all three?
FIVE SIGNS OF FULFILMENT
These five vital signs can help us guide youths toward positive fulfilment. They have been put in the form of questions that you can present to your child or yourself.
1. CONTENTMENT AND JOY
How much do you experience both joy and satisfaction in your life?
This is deceptively simple. Many people agree that we are content when our lives are going reasonably well and when we are being of service to others — family, classmates, colleagues, the community, and even strangers. But we also need some joy in our lives — moments that light us up and bring us smiles. This kind of joy comes from celebrating positive events with people we cherish.
2. HOPE
To what extent do you look ahead in your life with optimism, positive expectation, and anticipation of accomplishment?
When youths are pessimistic, see little chance of reaching positive goals, and feel hopeless, we cannot expect to see their best efforts at learning or good behaviour. We must work with their strengths and teach them to set and reach small goals so they can build a hopeful sense of accomplishment.
3. AWE
How often do you experience a sense of wonder, amazement, and astonishment?
We need to lift our childrens’ horizons by helping them appreciate the wonder around them: the miracle of a rainbow, a sunrise, how our bodies function, and the amazing ingenuity and goodness some people display. Even when life is difficult, a sense of awe helps us keep going. It can shift our perspective in ways that allow our thoughts and feelings to soar. Experiencing awe and wonder must be more than an annual event for our youths (and for adults).
4. MEANING/PURPOSE IN LIFE
Can you point to things in your life that give you positive meaning and purpose?
Research tells us that when some youths are not able to see pathways to prosocial purposes, they shift to antisocial ones. Having a sense of purpose and meaning is linked with fulfilment and is a normal sign of health. Because its absence is unsettling to individuals, it is not surprising to see youths and older people choose a negative purpose over no purpose. Consider why some children actively seek the role of class clown or bully.
5. DEEP CONNECTION
When do you have a sense that you are connected to something, or someone, bigger than yourself?
Rachael Kessler made it clear in The Soul of Education that connecting to something greater than oneself is a desirable part of development, especially in adolescence. It fuels idealism, learning, adventure, leaving comfort zones, and other actions that give youths energy and seem to make them feel as if their capacity and potential are limitless. It also tides them over in times of difficulty.
CULTIVATING A SENSE OF FULFILLMENT
All five of these areas — contentment/joy, hope, awe, meaning/purpose, and deep connection — are related to one another. Cultivating even one of these in youths can help advance the others when they are lacking. Our homes and schools need to be places of inspiration where social and emotional learning and character development are engaged intentionally and as often as academics.
Adapted from an article from edutopia "Guide Your Students Toward Positive Fulfilment" by Maurice J. Elias Please see the full article at: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/guide-your-students-toward-positive-fulfillment-maurice-elias
Pastoral Care Team