August 03, 2024

Quote of the Week

"For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?" -- bell hooks

How To Help Your Kids Understand Forgiveness

This week we invite you to watch this short video on helping children forgive in a healthy manner. To be forgiving requires feeding into the generosity and compassion in our hearts. Opportunities to forgive cross children and families via everyday matters and life-shifting incidents. This video offers a valuable reminder of the process that entails our choice to forgive, especially as it pertains to children -- it is not a neat one-shot activity, it requires time and self-compassion first. It is not an act of morally superiority. So what is a healthy form of forgiveness? It carries subtler nuances, as this video touches upon.

Image credit: here

Reading Corner

Name: Desmond and the Very Mean Word
Author: Desmond Tutu, Illustrator: AG Ford
Ages: Grade 3 and up

"This is a wonderful new picture book from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It relates a story that happened to a young Desmond during his childhood. I like that he does not name "the very mean word", as that opens the story up to any child who has been called something hurtful.

Much like his mentor Father Trevor, Archbishop Tutu creates his story in a kind and gentle way, relating the idea that forgiveness needs to be genuine and come in its own time. I especially like the words of Father Trevor, as he tells Desmond, when he wants to "get them back" for calling him a name, that "You will get them back, and then they will get you back, and soon our whole world will be filled with nothing but 'getting back.'" Wise words for children and adults!

One aspect of this book that makes it stand out, I think, is that the idea is presented that you need to forgive your tormentors, even if they don't apologize or seem remorseful. "When you forgive someone, you free yourself from what they have said or done. It's like magic." We can't control others, we can only control ourselves.

Archbishop Tutu does a great job introducing the idea of rising above and letting go of anger." -- A review at Goodreads

Be the Change

Invite children to join a circle and discuss how they have addressed the matter of forgiveness in their day to day existence (school, park, after-school activities, close family, teachers, neighborhood, communities, etc), what led them to this choice, and where have they found bumps and hesitations as they chose to forgive. They could write or draw to express.