Teach your children well...

Tomorrow: our last homestudy session. Hopefully.
We have been asked to consider how we will deal with adopted children throughout their lives with us. There are many concerns specific to the adopted children, centering around loss and resulting feelings of rejection, guilt/shame, grief and identity confusion leading to potential concerns with intimacy and problems with mastery and self-control. All of this will have to be addressed on an ongoing basis: it won't go away and stay gone. The best we can hope for is that our children come to terms with themselves and with us.

The following is from Communion with God, by Neale Donald Walsch. It perfectly encapsulates the things we want our children to learn.

TEACH THESE TRUTHS TO YOUR CHILDREN:

Teach your children that they need nothing exterior to themselves to be happy--no person, place or thing--and that true happiness is found within. Teach them that they are sufficient unto themselves.
Teach your children that failure is a fiction, that every trying is a success, and that every effort is what achieves the victory, with the first no less honourable than the last.
Teach your children that they are deeply connected to all of Life, that they are one with all people, and that they are never separate from God.
Teach your children that they live in a world of magnificent abundance, that there is enough for everyone, and that is in sharing the most, not gathering the most, that the most is received.
Teach your children that there is nothing that they are required to be or to do to be eligible for a life of dignity and fulfillment, that they need not compete with anyone for anything, and that God's blessings are meant for everyone.
Teach your children that they will never be judged, that they need not worry about always getting it right, and that they do not have to change anything or "get better" to be seen as perfect in the eyes of God...or their parents.
Teach your children that consequences and punishment are not the same thing, that Death does not exist, and that God would never condemn anyone.
Teach your children that there are no conditions to love, that they need not worry about ever losing your love, or God's, and that their own love, unconditionally shared, is the greatest gift they can give to the world.
Teach your children that being special does not mean being better, that claiming superiority over someone is not seeing them for who they really are, and that there is great healing in acknowledging "mine is not a better way, mine is merely another way."
Teach your children that there is nothing that they cannot do, that the Illusion of Ignorance can be eradicated from the earth, and that all anyone really needs is to be given back to themselves by being reminded of who they really are.
Teach these things not with your words, but with your actions; not with discussion, but with demonstration. For it is what you do that your children will emulate, and how you are that they will become.

TEACH THEM THIS, AND YOU WILL HAVE TAUGHT THEM GRANDLY.