Raising Calm and Compassionate Children

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Life in America can be noisy, hectic and overwhelming for us adults. Televisions blare, terrorism threatens and youth violence makes headlines. Imagine, then, modern lifes effect on our children. During her decades as an educator, Susan Usha Dermond has seen kids who are overstimulated, oversugured, overrun with material possessions and overscheduled.

As director of Beaverton, Oregons Living Wisdom School, she cultivates an environment in which, in addition to learning their ABCs and multiplication tables, her young charges develop their natural spirit of kindness, wonder and joy.

We all love being around children who are balanced, creative and joyful, says Usha. They can play an active game, listen to a good story, or look for shapes in clouds for a long time. These children go through the ordinary ups and downs of childhood, but most of the time they are happily engaged -- playing and learning with no thought of external approval or reward.

In her recently released book, Calm and Compassionate Children: A Handbook ($15.95, Ten Speed Press), Dermond shares her techniques for a healthy home that will open childrens hearts to the people and world around them. Modern Mom talked to Usha about how integrating nature, pets, stories, quiet time and rituals into our daily life can bring out the best in our kids.

Modern Mom: In your experience, what are some of the emotional and social issues affecting American children today? What are the causes?

Usha: I think the two most troubling issues facing the average child in the average household, are the decline of free play time and the trend toward more and more testing in schools. Both of these are preventing children whose gifts may be athletic, artistic, creative, entrepreneurial, or social from developing their gifts or being recognized for them. And even the intellectual children are suffering from the boring nature of instruction for testing.

The approach to education in the last decade has become more reductionist than it already was. Medicine is decades ahead of education in understanding the holistic nature of the body; the fact that the mind needs the same sort of holistic approach is being addressed only by the people (Eric Jensen, for example) who base educational theory on brain research or who take a spiritual approach (Education for Life schools, for example).

MM: In your book, you talk about cultivating a true happiness in children. What in your definition is happiness in children? How can we create inner calm and centeredness in our kids?

Usha: When children are happy, they learn and grow almost effortlessly, with enthusiasm and joy. In the U.S., as a culture, we tend to confuse excitement with happiness. Having a good time means partying, making a lot of noise, and having thrills such as on rides at a theme park. But true joy comes from within and may look calm and quiet, as well as enthusiastic.

Parents can begin to notice when their children are totally absorbed, in the flow, relaxed and uplifted by their environment. For my three-year-old nephew, this happens while he is playing with his trucks and fire engines or when he is discovering how something works. He was rapt watching the water flow down the street to the drain and trying to figure out where it goes from the drain.

Just noticing what brings each child inner joy and contentment and creating other opportunities for them to have more of those experiences is a great first step to helping children develop calm centeredness. What activities produce this response will vary from child to child; it may be creating a pretend world, physical activity from sports to bike riding, cuddling pets, creating art, being with a friend.

MM: How do children learn values? How can we as families keep values strong even when children are inundated by other influences and messages at school, from their peers, etc.

Usha: Of course, the most important way is by the models that parents and other adults provide. Spiritualitymatters of the heartare not taught, so much as caught, if children are put in an environment that nurtures calmness and compassion. When children are able to be content, to tolerate differences, and to give as well as receive, it is not primarily because of religious instruction or intellectual understanding; it is a matter of the heart.

Compassion arises from ones own security in feeling loved and from the ability to imagine another persons reality. When you comfort a lost child or stop to help an elderly person who has dropped her groceries, do you do these things because of rules you were taught or because of a prompting from the heart? The truth is that reason usually follows feeling.