Top 3 Lessons I (Hope I) Taught my Kids

By Mike Cooper / Naperville Senior Center / Adult Services

As a parent, you hope you can impart some valuable wisdom to your children, or at least a few good lessons along the way, to help them grow into dependable, mature adults. Sometimes you feel like all of your words or actions are falling on deaf ears; other times you see the spark that makes it all worthwhile.

Just as my dad taught me some valuable lessons growing up, I, too, have shared some with my children.

Here are the top 3 (from my point of view):

1. The Value of Money. Wouldn’t it be great if money really did grow on trees? Well, it doesn’t. It is important to make sure that kids understand how to care for the things they have so they last, as well as the cost associated with having those things in the first place. We had no ‘silver spoons’ in our family; our children were shown, by example, how to save and when it was okay to spend. (If only our politicians had learned that lesson!)
2. Be Responsible. This is easy – if you say you are going to do something, do it. It really doesn’t get any easier than that.
3. Make Good Choices. We have tried to instill a little bit of the Holy Spirit into our children through our actions and words. It seems too easy to see someone else’s ‘bad’ choices with social media giving you 24/7 access to pictures that shouldn’t have been posted in the first place. We hope that our kids will make the right choices to start, so not to have the ‘wrong’ pictures at all.

From generation to generation, parents want to impart wisdom to their children that they learned through their own mistakes. Sometimes it works; other times you simply have to let your kids make their own mistakes so they can learn from them. It will give them their own ‘words of wisdom’ that they will want to share with their own kids someday.

At Naperville Senior Center, adult services, we treat our Members like family.We would like to have your loved one see our facility and have lunch with us! Contact us to schedule a FREE 3-hour trial at our facility so you can see what we have to offer and understand the Naperville Senior Center experience, Home Away From Home.