I had a student who came into my room. The second he saw me he started crying. After he was able to catch his breath and calm down, he was able to communicate to me that he had been taken to foster care the previous night. He was crushed. As he began to tell me his story, another student spoke out and explained that she had to go live with her grandmother recently and if her grandmother could not have taken her, she would have gone to foster care as well.
We stopped what we were doing and had a heart to heart about choices. Here were kids whose lives were turned inside out because of someone else’s choices. I reminded them they had done nothing wrong. But I directed the conversation in a specific way to teach them a life lesson. Our choices not only impact us, but they impact others.
As parents, it’s imperative that we teach our kids this fact of life. Our choices most definitely impact others. I keep hearing, “It’s my choice” all over the news and social media. Sure, we live in a free country and we get to make lots of choices. But with freedom comes responsibility. We are missing this second part of the equation!
It’s even more important for us to remember this as we work to raise our kids to be moral, productive adults. Our actions and choices impact more than just us. Just as there is a ripple effect when we do something good, there is a ripple effect when we do things that are not so good. No one is perfect, but we need to be aware of our actions and how they might impact these around us.
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