Kids ' priorities

It's a beautiful way of articulating the importance of building the third of the capabilities— priorities. It affects what our children will put first in their lives. In fact, it may be the single most important capability we can give our kids.
You can probably recall similar moments from your own childhood— the times that you picked up something important from your parents that they probably weren't aware they were sharing. Your parents most likely weren't thinking consciously about teaching you the right priorities at the time-but simply because they were there with you in those learning moments, those values became your values, too.Which means that first, when children are ready to learn,we need to be there.And second,we need to be found displaying through our actions,the priorities and values that we want our children to learn.
Yet again,in outsourcing much of the work that formerly filled our homes,we have created a void in our children's lives that often gets filled with activities in which we are not involved.And as a result,when our children are ready to learn, it is often people whom we do not know or respect who are going to be there.
There's a wonderful conundrum left to us by the Greeks.It was first put to print by the author Plutarch,and it's known as the Ship of Theseus.As a tribute to the mythical founder of their city— famed for slaying the Minotaur— the Athenians committed to keeping Theseus's ship seaworthy in the harbor of Athens.As parts of the boat decayed,they were replaced...until eventually,every last part of the boat had been changed.
这是一个很好的方式来阐明建立第三种能力的重要性——优先权。它会影响我们的孩子在生活中把什么放在第一位。事实上，这可能是我们能给孩子的最重要的能力。
你或许能回忆起自己童年时类似的时刻——你从父母那里获得了一些重要的东西，而他们可能没有意识到他们正在分享。你的父母很可能当时无意教你正确的优先事项，但仅仅因为他们在你学习的时候陪着你，他们的价值观也成为了你的价值观。这意味着，首先，当孩子们准备好学习时，我们需要在他们身边。第二，我们需要通过我们的行动来展示，我们希望我们的孩子学习的优先事项和价值观。
然而，再一次地，外包了以前我们家庭的大部分工作后，孩子们的生活空虚了，然后就被各种活动填满，我们本身并不参与。因此，当我们的孩子准备好学习时，往往陪着他们的是我们不认识或不尊重的人。
希腊人给我们留下了一个奇妙的难题。首次出版的书作者是普鲁塔克，书名是忒修斯之船。为了向他们城市的神话创始人——以杀死弥诺陶洛斯而闻名——致敬，雅典人承诺让忒修斯的船在雅典港口保持适航状态。船的一些腐烂部分会被换下...到最后，船的每一个部分都换过了。