Small, Average or Great Minds

Routines and family life changes as the children get older and start to spread their wings. John works, ‘Miss A’ goes off to work and softball, ‘Miss R’ goes to school, leaving the boys and I at home to learn, live and love together. While I thoroughly enjoy my time with the boys, I miss the girls. So our family meal table is often loud and harried with thoughts, comments and opinions flying everywhere. Often though, the thoughts expressed can start to become negative or critical so we’ve used a variety of ways to put a stop to that.

Using the THINK principle often cements life-giving, true principles into our minds but after reminding the children of the THINK principle, the conversation can often go quiet. I came across a great quote by Eleanor Roosevelt and we have printed it out. The children even quote it to one another now. We call it Great Minds.

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt

What do you discuss? Do you encourage your children to discuss people, events or ideas? Are you modeling these principles? It’s a challenging thought, isn’t it? One way I’ve found to discuss events is to talk about the day’s learning and studying activities or to discuss a current event. Good, living books are filled with great ideas that will stimulate your mind. Good T.V. shows can do the same. Twaddly books and shows will lead into the discussion of people, which is nearly always negative.

In what ways do you encourage your children toward discussing ideas and events rather than people?

You might also like to read the following posts:

1. A great week of softball Whew! What a fantastic, exciting, stressful yet satisfying week! A whole week of softball, featuring U/16 Girls from each state...
2. Thoughts on Moving Well, we’re moving! It will all be happening soon. I think most people know how excited we are…but I’m also...
3. Teaching Older Children to Be a Friend… We had visitors the other day! Friends that we hadn’t seen for several months. It was wonderful time of fellowship...
4. The blog about not blogging about the Big Picture Conference! What a whirlwind weekend! ‘Miss A’ , ‘Miss R’ and I excitedly set off early on Thursday morning to drive...
5. Not a National Identity card…it’s a Smart Card! I try not to be an alarmist or to be freaked out by progressive technology…but, I don’t like the sound...