Parents are 

their Child’s 

First Teacher

 

Pat Belvel

28

Enlightenment Journal | Summer 2012

P

arenting is perhaps the most 

heart-filled and challenging job in 

the world with the potential for 

influencing the social direction of the 

entire human race. As parents, we have 

the blessing and the challenge to shape 

our society and chart the social 

direction for our world.

 We are our child’s first teacher. 

How can we teach and parent with 

compassion? Compassion, as defined 

by Hart & Hodson, co-authors of The 

Compassionate Classroom is “a way of 

being in relationship, a way of acting 

and interacting….” As a mother and a 

teacher, I know that we all want to be 

in a relationship of loving-kindness 

with our children and want to teach 

them how to be that way with us.

A critical key for compassionate 

parent-teachers is to: Ask more and 

tell less. We know firsthand that 

changing a behavior can be difficult 

work. In fact, according to Leslie Hart 

in her book, Human Brain & Human 

Learning, our behavior is organically 

stored in our brain as a program. Once 

a program is built, we don’t lose it. Our 

brain fires according to the longest and 

strongest stored program, whether it is 

helpful or unhelpful. If it is unhelpful, 

the only way we can keep it from 

being activated is to build a stronger 

program of the new, more appropriate 

and compassionate behavior. This 

way, the brain will fire to the new, 

stronger program instead. We used to 

refer to stored programs of behavior 

as habits, not knowing that they are 

really organically stored in our brain 

much like on a computer chip and that 

the brain automatically defaults to this 

program. How many times have you 

experienced the automatic response of 

habit? Have you ever moved into a new 

place and found yourself continuing 

LIGHTING THE PATH FOR CHILDREN

If we are to have real peace, we must begin with the children.

—Mahatma Gandhi