Teaching well usually involves knowledge of the subject, interest in helping people learn about it, ability to make the subject come alive and to demonstrate how it can be applied. Any school curriculum consists of various courses that are related to each other in an organized way. Parents need to offer their children a similar opportunity for wholeness. Specifically, they need to teach (often by example) how to love, how to think, how to work, and how to play.

How to love is best taught by providing a home where love is present. Love is more than warm feelings, acts of kindness, nurturing, and approval. Love includes setting limits—saying no as well as yes. Love is sometimes challenged when people are tired, anxious, or critical, or when communication is inadequate and conflict erupts. It is also challenged when tragedy strikes in the form of accident, death, or illness. We need love when despair sets in because a job is lost or a friend betrays us or a colleague doesn’t keep promises. Love is not just an expression of happiness when things are going well. It includes being present for others when things are not going well.

The need to love oneself is also learned at home. Parents who act like martyrs to their children may believe they are showing love. They are not. They many be overindulging their children who will, in turn, take a self-centered view of life and overindulge themselves. Parents who teach love demonstrate by their actions the importance of taking responsibility for yourself and acting in loving ways because you are lovable.

How to think is best taught by encouraging children to do their own thinking and not giving them all the answers. Parents who want their children to think encourage them to observe the external world as well as their internal thoughts and feelings and to think of themselves as unique. They encourage school performance and the use of libraries. They share ideas and assist, if needed, with homework. They treat children like intelligent beings who very often have good ideas and sound solutions to problems.

How to work is best taught by demonstration and involvement. Parents, who show their children how to handle tools and machinery, without being too critical in the process, help the children develop confidence and self-esteem. Distribution of family chores (dependent upon the ages and capacities of the children and the family situation) teaches children that getting the daily work done can enhance life because it leads to order instead of disorder. Like play, work can be overemphasized. When it is, many people begin to think of it as distasteful. Later, they may choose boring jobs that require neither logical nor creative thinking. An effective parent, by example and precept, shows that work is often enjoyable—both the process of doing it and the product when it is done.

How to play is sometimes the most difficult thing for parents to teach, because they have structured their own lives without play. Thus they demonstrate, in their living and teaching, a “don’t enjoy” injunction. Such parents do not know that play is the “work” of childhood. In play, children experiment with life roles. They use their imagination and expand their creativity. Playing with peers, they learn new interpersonal skills and the value of cooperation for achieving goals. So one of the most important parental tasks is encouraging children to play. People whose parents did not value play need a new Parent who does. Laughter often liberates by reducing personal or interpersonal tension. A playful person can laugh and love, think and work, with more enjoyment for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.