Like this:

Not long ago, my daughter disobeyed a rule and knew that she was doing so. When i noticed, i decided to sit her on my lap and have a loving, serious chat. The rule she was breaking in this case wasn’t a big deal. What i wanted to talk about was why she would go ahead and do something that she knew she wasn’t allowed to do or that i didn’t approve of.

First i’d like to re-iterate the concept of obedience being a virtue. Just like patience for example, it needs to be learned, explained, valued, emphasized, practiced and most importantly seen in real life situations, acted out hopefully by the prime examples to children, their parents. (Finding opportunities to share of our own crises and victories with our children can be very beneficial to them as they get to see what it looks like to have these issues and hopefully gives them positive examples of how to deal with them.)

In an earlier post, i explained a virtue game to help demonstrate to children the idea of their hearts being like a mirror that reflects the light of God or the light of the the virtues. This idea comes back in my conversations with my children all the time because in the end what we do affects others, but even the more certain, it affects our own hearts –  making us more or less ”radiant”. My 5-year-old son responds better to this kind of advice than any other kind i have tried. He cares about the radiance of his heart!

Obedience is a capacity that can be developed, a spiritual capacity that demands conscious effort just like all the other spiritual qualities (or virtues) that we can manifest, as all these virtues are intrinsic within the human soul. They just need to be mined, like gems, and polished. If obedience is intrinsic, then beyond the “pain” of effort it should feel harmonious with our true nature to obey the laws of life – the laws that ensure our mental, physical, and spiritual health and that assure unity and brotherhood in the community of mankind.

I always try my best to clearly explain the reason for our family rules, but sometimes our children might still have a hard time understanding them. I explained this to her. There needs to be a level of trust on her part that my job is to help her grow into a beautiful tree that will give the world beautiful fruit. Laws and rules can seem a little obscure sometimes, but as long as they are just (based on what is morally right and fair) with time they often grow clearer as we ourselves grow and become better fit to understand the benefit and well-being they bring to the individual and the community. You can give simple examples of civil laws, religious laws, or even game rules that don’t seem so obvious at first glance. I explained to my daughter why it’s important to trust mommy’s wisdom (the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgement) and that it’s good practice for when it will be all up to her to obey some bigger laws of life. But this beautiful virtue of self-control and understanding is hers to apply already, to all sorts of rules and situations in the many instances when she is on her own to make choices.

So next I introduced to her the concept of conscience, that i described as the little voice, or the feeling, inside her heart that tells her if something seems right or wrong. Like a compass, it can point to the right choices for us at that time. All we need to do next is quiet down and pay attention to it, and obey it (behave in accordance with it). Your heart knows, i told her.

I then gave her a real-life situation that could ask for her to make a big decision that involved peer pressure. I think a “big choice” example clearly defines the feeling of right and wrong in the heart. She certainly has felt it before, but here i was trying to clearly label it for her future reference. There are many other examples one can give with smaller every day things, like sharing with a sibling. You can ask the child to notice the big feeling of wanting something all to oneself and the fear of not having it, that uncomfortable feeling that’s taking up all the space, and to try to quietly feel what the heart truly and easily feels behind it.

I reverted back to the rule she had just broken, and how even though it wasn’t a dangerous rule to break, it was a rule nonetheless. Her heart knew that she was breaking a rule. She needed to trust me that the rule was there for a healthy reason, and she needed to learn to obey the voice in her heart that knew that what she about to do was either right or wrong. I told her some rules can change and evolve, depending on my own understanding and her level of maturity, but regardless of this exterior situation, one needs to obey his or her heart in doing what’s right.

“[...] Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom…” - Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 259–60

“Children are even as a branch that is fresh and green; they will grow up in whatever way you train them. Take the utmost care to give them high ideals and goals, so that once they come of age, they will cast their beams like brilliant candles on the world, and will not be defiled by lusts and passions in the way of animals, heedless and unaware, but instead will set their hearts on achieving everlasting honour and acquiring all the excellences of humankind.” - Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, pp. 135–36

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