Integrity – The Most Important Lesson Of All

Posted On March 27, 2020

So, how is it going so far? How are we doing living together 24/7? How are we succeeding as teachers as well as parents?

Are you actively planning how to create a love of learning in your household? Are you brainstorming with your children ideas for service? Are you following through on these projects? Keeping your word with the intentions you set?

Integrity

Today’s post is about just that—Integrity, keeping your word, and following through. Integrity is arguably the most important lesson you can teach your children. Period. A life without Learning or Service is missing opportunities, but a life lived without Integrity is a failure. 

Can we share some thoughts on how to make Integrity part of your classroom at home?

We all have a gut sense of the word. No doubt, like us, you’ve had several conversations with your family about honesty. Have to love those sticky moments when your son’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar! To really teach a concept to children, however, you must be preemptive, precise, and complete. In Resilience Parenting, we set out a framework to make Integrity an easy-to-define concept for kids. It looks like this:

Integrity breaks down into two parts, being honest and fulfilling obligations. 

It starts with being honest, which is sometimes oversimplified to simply being truthful. But being truthful is insufficient. We must also be forthright—willing to volunteer information that another person deserves to know. Careful, being forthright does not mean sharing everything with everyone; kids need a lot of help with that distinction! There are some things, as our parents taught us that are better left unsaid.

Like honesty, fulfilling one’s obligations is also comprised of two parts. The first is to follow through on what you say you are going to do. If I say, for instance, that I am going to practice reading with my kids, then I have to practice reading if I want to keep my Integrity intact. The second component is to rectify a situation in case of failure. We are being perfectly honest here, right? Despite our best intentions, there are times in life when we fail to do what we promised. In those instances, we must make amends with the person or people we let down.

Guess what? You can teach these big ideas with a ten-minute activity. From what I’ve seen posted on social media, you are already on the right track! Many folks are making a daily to-do list with their kids, helping them set their intentions for the day. Did you realize that by creating these lists, you have an opportunity to teach and practice Integrity? 

Our goal here is to elevate a simple to-do list to a lesson of moral proportions.

Ready? Try this:

1. Call a Family Meeting.
   1. Remember, snacks or smoothies always grease the machine of family meetings
   2. Add a gong, introductory music, or family credo to set the tone, if you like
2. Make a Big Poster with your daily intentions. 
   1. Put everyone’s name on the list
   2. Include your name; model the behavior—you want to practice Integrity, too!
3. Ask everyone to verbalize a few ideas of what they’d like to accomplish today and record them on the poster
   1. Start by asking your children what they would like to do, rather than giving assignments, your child owns the intention
   2. Add the items that you know need to be done
   3. Help your child understand that to be an actionable goal; written goals need to be specific (i.e., “paint for 30 minutes” or “finish three pages” rather than “art” or “math”)
4. Let your child know that once he finishes a task, he can cross it off the list!

Presto! But here’s the critical part. Before adjourning your meeting, in order to make this activity a lesson on Integrity, you must explain why to-do lists help us practice honesty and fulfilling obligations. Diagram the four parts of Integrity at the bottom of your poster so that you can introduce the following concepts:

1. Teach how an obligation is an agreement with oneself or others. 
2. Agreements put dreams into a rocket ship, ready to launch into reality! By writing down thoughts on what you’d like to accomplish in a day, you transform ideas from being mere possibilities into robust agreements with yourself and others. 
3. A person who fulfills agreements is a person with Integrity, and Integrity is the most valuable treasure you have! It’s like a superpower. If you have it, you can accomplish just about anything.

Not all of the parts of Integrity need come out in your first meeting. You’ll be using this poster daily, and as you do, you will find ways to bring the big concepts to the surface. For instance, if your child has trouble fulfilling obligations at the first go, you can bring up the next couple of points:

1. If you don’t fulfill your obligations today, you must be honest with yourself about that. Now you are practicing honesty, too! 
2. Share your results with your parents, and you are practicing forthrightness, also.
3. An essential part of honesty is self-assessment, knowing what you can realistically accomplish in a day. Complete your Integrity practice by making it right—make amends as appropriate and make adjustments for the next day. 

We are born with Integrity. Unlike Learning and Service, which we must develop through specific behaviors in childhood and beyond, Integrity exists in complete form at the time of our first breath. Our actions throughout life determine whether this quality of existence maintains its state of perfection. Those who strive to preserve their Integrity will succeed in having functional and fulfilling lives.

Next up… Maintaining a Teacher’s Mindset. Stay tuned!