Snyder Family Values
What they represent and how to instill them
These are the building blocks for a lifetime. Religion has provided a framework for thousands of years as a cornerstone for values. Stories in the Bible are retold in Sunday school in easy-to-understand terms. These are very basic black/white values that are easy to understand. Religion also provides easy answers to things mankind does not know, like why people die, what happens to dead people, and so on.
These traits are built on top of the basic traits. These are much more complex and are a journey from teaching how to act to ending how to think. You can teach knowledge; your child can be very smart about facts/figures and speak multiple languages, but wisdom is experiential and is learned by observation. If your child does not have the opportunity to witness a formative figure exhibit humility and temperance, they may never easily learn those traits by observation. Self-awareness is the key to navigating from the active to the passive side of the arch.
Guiding children to believe they need to leverage their God-given talents and resources to contribute to society and make a living is a major endeavor. The greater the gifts, the more they need to give back in their lifetime. This is learned by teaching and example. You can buy your children an excellent education, but you must teach duty, service, and charity by example.
Teaching your children that an education does not end with a degree. This is a lifelong process of stretching your boundaries of understanding by studying the essence of mankind. This process includes experiences that incorporate failures as well as successes; experiences forge wisdom. As you study others' values, needs, and drives empathy allows an acute understanding of how others see the world.
These traits have to be earned and are the foundation of every major relationship in your life – trust/respect. Without these traits, it is difficult to build all of the other traits that are needed in life.
This trait is a journey that never ends. It starts when you start in church studying basic human values and expands as the quest expands. The only limits to this path are self-imposed. The journey opens one's eyes and heart as empathy heightens. The spectrum starts with looking at the world through your own eyes, then through the interpretation of others, and finally through seeing through others. In this process, the love of the world matures.