A first step.

I am going to commit to this now, or it will never happen. I am a procrastinator. I am filled with ideas and very little follow-through. But not this time! So here we go.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I told myself to get rid of my own personal hopes and dreams and aspirations, because this child would surely have her own. She might not love to read books for hours on end. She might not want to save gorillas in the misty mountains of Rwanda (not that I ever did, either). She might hate folksy, flutey, fiddley music and laugh if I suggested a game of Tetris. Who knows, she could grow up to love sports and celery - the exact opposite of me! I decided that none of that would matter - there were only two things I wanted. I wanted her to be happy - to grow up knowing what true happiness feels like, and to learn how to build a happy life for herself, whatever that wold mean for her. I also wanted her to be kind. To me, kindness and happiness are connected. You cannot be truly happy if you are making other people unhappy. Similarly, making other people happy is one of the surest ways of becoming happy.

Teaching kindness, however, is a little trickier. My daughter, and her younger brother, are both very happy.They have no reason not to be. But am I raising two kind children? I don't know. They are four and one, so I suppose it is alittle early to tell. But it is not too early to start trying. And that is what this blog is about.