Editor's Note:  This month the Meridian Family Value of the month is LOVE.  Click here to read this month's overview article). Each week during the month we will post an update in Meridian, illustrating a couple of the Eyres' favorite methods for teaching the powerful value of LOVE to each age group.  Remember that you can also go to http://www.valuesparenting.com/ for still more ideas and teaching methods.  Thanks for your interest and participation.  There are tens of thousands of parents concentrating on this value this month.  It is a way of saving this disrespectful society of ours - one family at a time!

Methods for Preschoolers

Teaching preschool children to love and prioritize loving themselves and their family above all other things is a wonderful gift that will stay with them throughout their lives. 

Service in the Home

One way to teach small children love is through service. If given proper instruction, even a three-year-old can set the table, put his own toys away, and help make his bed, even though these tasks are much easier to do yourself. If performing these tasks is prefaced by comments from the parents about how happy it makes them when children help, these simple tasks can be used to help the preschooler experience the joy of showing love through service.

Methods for Elementary School Age

Taking Responsibility for Younger Siblings

You can teach love to this age group by giving them the privilege of helping and serving younger children. Call the older child a tutor and tell him that the younger child is his tutee. Tell the older child that he will have the opportunity of helping that little child in many ways. He can sit next to the child at meal times and help him with cutting meat, pouring milk, and finishing his food. He can also be the one to hold that little child's hand at the zoo, put him to bed, read stories to him at bedtime, and generally act as the younger child's guardian angel.

Attach a time limit (e.g., "You can be your little bother's tutor for one month") and offer a monetary reward, if you think it's appropriate, for his help. The older child will not only learn to love whom he serves but will also have an added appreciation for you as his parents as he help with things you usually do.

Methods for Adolescents

Set an Example of Tolerance

Teach children to accept people who are different from them by being tolerant of other lifestyles. Help them to see that "our way" of doing things is not the only way and perhaps not always the best way. Adolescents can see that there are interesting things to be learned and loved about people from all lifestyles. Also, talk with children about why people are the way they are and discuss possible reasons and causes for people's observed problems.

During the month we were concentrating on love and tolerance, "Drug Awareness Week" was being held at our junior high school. Several former drug addicts from all different social and economic backgrounds came and spoke to the kids. We were proud of how our seventh-grader responded when he came home and said, "Mom, they were all just really nice people who either thought they would like to have an adventure or needed to get out of the real world because their lives were in such a mess."

Look for Special Needs... and the Service Award

It's important to teach children to look for those who need help.

One father taught awareness and love for others by asking his son every day, when he came home from school, "Son, did you help anyone today?" at first the son looked back at him blankly and said, "Well, no." The father just smiled and changed the subject. After being asked the same question and giving the same answer about twenty days in a row, one day the son had finally said yes - and told how he had noticed a handicapped boy and helped him get to class.

As parents we need to let our children know that it is important to us that they learn to love others by looking for opportunities to help. As always, example is the best teacher and we need to share our own personal efforts to give help or service.