Does Your Child Have Real Heroes?
Posted: July 13, 2022
Not a movie or comic book heroes. I am talking real, breathing, talking heroes. Ones that your child can talk with, interact with, and learn from.
If we don’t help our children find real heroes that are worth emulating, then they are going to find their own. It’s just how things work. If they find good ones, we are okay with it, but if they find bad ones, we call that negative peer pressure. We hear things like, they got in with a bad crowd.
We can’t make our children follow heroes that we deem to be okay. It sadly doesn’t work that way. But as parents we can make sure our children are surrounded by the type of people, we would like our children to identify with, learn from and look up to.
As a parent, I don’t want to leave my child’s future up to chance and luck. I know I can’t control outcomes, but I do know that I can make sure my child is in positive and growth-oriented activities where they will be surrounded by positive people who are worth being around and who have something good to pass on to my children.
When picking an activity for your child to do, make sure you also consider who does those kinds of activities and the culture around the activity. I am talking mostly here about children from 5 to 13 years old. The formative years.
Growing up I had very few live heroes worth following. But the couple that I had made all the difference in my life. I would not be who I am today without them.
Two heroes that made a big difference in my life were my 5th-grade teacher and my martial arts instructor. Two individuals changed my life. Being around them made me a better person and helped form the beliefs and attitudes that I carry to this day.
The benefits of a real hero? You can talk to them. You can watch them, and you can learn from them. They are human just like you and me. We can take the best from them, and we don’t have to take what we don’t like or want.
Not all heroes are created equal. And not all heroes are fiction. The world is full of live heroes waiting and willing to be a positive influence in your child’s life.
