The Fruits of the Spirit are: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control.

 

Think about what those look like in a person you admire. Can you recall people you appreciate because of their wisdom, sense of self, their calm spirit, and that their goodness radiates their character? As a result, isn’t their life the kind of life you see yourself living in some ways? In other words, the quality of their character is evident in the quality of their life.

 

Over the next couple of decades, you’ll have the opportunity to take little snippets of your child’s life and help them understand how the lesson of a character-moment fits into their behavior. Take the heart issue of Thankfulness. It’s one of the first things you teach your child to say, “Thank you” and “You’re welcome”. The lesson comes before understanding. Just as Thankfulness is a virtue you teach from your library of “Things you just do”, there are scores of virtues that have the same impact on life that are worthy of similar parenting lessons.

 

What follows in this Letter and many Letters to come are Virtues, lessons for the heart, that can be caught in the moment and taught at night. We want to provide you with quick reference material to fill your child’s library with life’s virtues that will lead to success and happiness. Just as you have them memorize Thankfulness, you can just as easily have them memorize quotes, poems, verses, and sayings. For example, for the virtue of Perseverance, it’s hard to find a better quote than from Calvin Coolidge:

 

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

 

Or the Bible verse James 1:2-4:

 

2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

 

Or this poem by Douglas Malloch:

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease,
The stronger wind, the stronger trees,
The further sky, the greater length,
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.

 

Let dinner conversations and bedtime chats abound with these lessons. Perseverance is a core quality of adulthood. Skill development requires it. The challenges of life demand it. It’s commonplace to deflect blame but requires fortitude to expose your self-concept to the weight of being wrong. Just as a toddler is parented to mimic the words ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’, the growing child should be parented to mimic the concept of Perseverance. Then, as situations arise, parents can extract the essence of the virtue in the example and teach the heart issue of perseverance.

 

To the development of a virtuous child that others will look upon with admiration,

 

Lis and Dave Marr