Beyond please and thank you.....

This project emerged out of a growing unease I've felt about the ways in which I've been failing my kid.  Now, I should say, the fear that I'm failing my kid is itself not new, as I think that's been around since she first emerged, squalling, from the womb (well, admittedly, way before that).  But the particular problem is this: like many parents, I fret over her education, I sign her up for dance, for swimming, for art classes, I drag her to 'enrichment' activities, and sign her up for camps, but all of these, as lovely as they are, and as great for her development as they are, focus for the most part on supporting her individual growth and achievement. I do this in the context of a larger culture that prioritizes individual achievement and personal success and justifies vast systemic inequalities through the language of equal opportunity self-bootstrapping (yes, I know, radically simplistic summary, but this is a blog, not a thesis).

What's missing in all of these nice activities is the opportunity to teach her what her role is in building the community, shaping the world in which we live,  and the humility necessary to face our responsibilities to others and our fundamental interdependency with them.  As much as I want her to be independent and strong and capable of achieving her dreams, it matters to me that she understand and accept that she has to do her best to bring others along with her, to give back as well as take, to contribute what she can to the ever-present need to make the world more just, more equitable, more sustainable, more beautiful, for everyone.

Like most parents, I have worked hard to teach my daughter to say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me", the basic building blocks of respect for others, enacted usually before they are completely understood.  This has been moderately successful.  The same with the lessons on sharing, picking up after yourself, treating your friends well.  These are excellent tools for responsible and caring citizens of the world.  But my efforts to build on this, and connect her to larger social responsibilities, have been far less consistent.

There are a lot of good reasons for this.  It's easier to sign a kid up for dance class than to find a place to volunteer with a kid in tow.  Explaining the need to address injustice, poverty, violence and the bad behavior of adults to children requires explaining that those things exist (if you're lucky enough to not experience them yourself).  We know that children learn best not through lectures but through modeling and practice through play.  It's hard for all of us with our busy, oversubscribed lives to make room for this.  Some faith communities provide these kinds of opportunities, through youth groups and social justice work, but options for the secular (among whom I count myself, proudly) are less evident.  Some people turn to the Girl Scouts, or Boy Scouts, but these are not the right fit for every family.

So what do we do (because if you've read this far, well, then, I'm assuming you're flailing around like me)?  Well, I'm doing this - starting a place to share ideas, pool information about opportunities, organize.  Specifically, I'm starting out with two main goals here:

• Crowd-sourcing the challenge of raising socially responsible, engaged kids: I'm going to collect from wherever I can--depending on the readers of this blog, friends, the twitterverse, etc., to help--resources, links, volunteering opportunities, advice, etc.  I absolutely can't do this on my own, and I'm no kind of expert, so I want YOU to help out here. 
• Organizing group activities: Once this is underway for a bit, I am going to use this as a hub for organizing projects and activities that folks can join.  It might involve a one-time group volunteering project like cleaning up a park, or helping kids develop and implement their own project around something they care about.  There will be a facebook page, there will probably be a twitter account, but, for the start, I'm going to use this site to post activities.  I'm relatively new to the blogging and posting world, so expect a bit of technological incompetence.

For the most part, this site will focus on younger children, elementary school age into middle school.  There are some great sites and great opportunities out there for teenagers (and in my work life, I know a lot about those), and I will include links to those as they come in.

But enough about me.  Tell me what you think.  Are you interested?  What should I include here?  Send me ideas, criticisms, events, websites to post, books to read.  This only works as a joint endeavor, so I look forward to hearing from you.

Nancy