• Clearly separate dissatisfaction with behavior from love of child. Assure and reassure your children of your unconditional love for them. At every instance of discipline or correction reiterate that it is what the child did that you do not like and that your love for the child cannot be altered by anything. Mention this frequently to children of all ages, and back it up with a hug and physical affection. Say, "James, I was really upset when you were two hours late getting home from school and didn't call me, and you deserve the penalty you're getting, but I want to remind you that it's what you did that I'm not so wild about. I still love you as much as ever. I always do and always will!
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• Develop a service orientation. You and your children can learn collectively to love though serving. Any think of service project is a "Petri dish" for growing love. Look for charitable services that can be rendered as a family and that can involve your children. These can range from a "Sub-for-Santa" charity program at Christmastime to clean-up, fix-up projects in summer to helping needy people at any time of year.

Our son Josh was trying to decide on his "Eagle project" for Scouts. It was midwinter and his Scoutmaster mentioned that the local shelter was now providing beds for more than two hundred helpless men. Josh decided to organize a big chili dinner for them. He recruited the other Scouts (actually the other Scouts' mothers) to make big pots of chili. He got rolls and fruit and punch donated by various individuals and let his brothers and sisters help out with the preparations. When the big night came, he watched with pride as the children served up chili in Styrofoam bowls to appreciative down-and-out men, who thanked them profusely and sat on their cots to eat. We watched the kids hand out rolls and carrots and apples and doughnuts. We watched the interactions and the looks of pity, of appreciation, of love. One man said he had once been an Eagle Scout himself and asked Josh if he could attend the Court of Honor when Josh got his Eagle. On the way home that night and for days thereafter, the kids talked about little else. And in their words were the insights of compassion and the tones of love for those they had served.

• Provide and Allow for Apology and "Repentance." This helps show children that you place love and improvement over punishment and penalty. Too often, well-meaning parents adopt an almost Gestapo-like mentality of "justice" and retribution. "Break a law, get a punishment."  Love is better taught in settings where "repentance" or restitution is an alternative to punishment.

Teach children that when they make a mistake, or lose their temper, or break a family law, they can often avoid a punishment if they apologize, make restitution, and promise not to "do it again." For smaller children use the "repenting bench" mentioned earlier. When two children fight or argue, sit them on the bench and tell them that the only way to get off the bench is to say what they (not the other guy) did wrong, to apologize (including a hug), and to promise not to do it again. Help them to see that whenever there is a fight or argument, both parties have done something ("it takes two to tangle").  Praise them and show pride for any "repenting" they do. The whole process can add to the love that is expressed and felt in your home.

Coming Up

Join us each week during the coming month for specific ideas for pre-schoolers, elementary age kids, and adolescents.  This is a fun value to teach kids - partly because they can teach us so much about it -and because, through their presence in our lives, we learn about it ourselves on a new level.

Closing Note: Many have asked if there are actual teaching tools to assist parents in teaching the Meridian family value of the month to their children. The Eyres have been involved with a series of values-teaching CDs called Alexander's Amazing Adventures, which give 5-14 year old children a vicarious (and dramatic) experience with each month's value. By special arrangement, Meridian readers who have been following this column and participating in the value of the month can now receive, as a free gift, the HONESTY CD from this series.  Simply send a self-addressed, stamped 5 X 7 or 8 X 10 envelope (the padded ones are best) to the Eyres at 1098 Augusta Way, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108 and they will send you the gift CD.  (You will need to put $0.87 [87cents] in stamps or postage on your return envelope.) Please respond only if you have been reading and following the column, and please do not ask for more than one copy of the CD.  We hope this gift will help make the value-of-the-month concept even more effective within your family.