Butterflies and Parenting
Children learn. But what do we want them to learn?
Do we want them to learn to be: persistent? Good communicators? Good at relationships? Respectful? Happy? Self-reliant? A self-starter? Able to read so they can read to learn?
I think we can agree that education can provide our children with the tools to have a successful life. BUT IT TAKES SO LONG… That magical little baby is learning. Their brain is being bombarded with information that can either help them be successful or not so much. We know that angry, loud, unsafe surroundings do not stimulate the brain to want to grow into a successful adult. We know that a safe, loving, stimulating environment builds resilience and scaffolds the ability to learn as the child matures. It does not take a PHD, Master’s degree or university training to raise a successful child. We know that. We also know that successful children had caregivers and parents that cared and wanted to do a good job of parenting them.
The butterfly effect is often discussed in chaos theory. The butterfly effect is where small changes, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can result in a much larger effect later. One child starts to throw rocks at a tree; soon all the kids are hitting the tree with rocks. One person hums a familiar tune, the songs get stuck in our head. Butterfly effect.
Some call this effect contagion, or mental culture, making memes that can be transferred from one person to another. The Utopia teams in the field do school visits, community programs, parenting talks, refugee camp trainings and sports outreach endeavors with our books and postcards created to support our teams. Through STEPi, we help transform and move communities towards resilience, self-sufficiency, and peace and away from dependence, victimhood and violence. The parent or caregiver reading Parenting with Love, or said book having its wisdom translated to the local language in a parenting talk in a community space or local radio station, gives solid information that builds the society we want. The teacher using vividly illustrated, beautifully designed STEPi storybooks to teach the children about virtue, values and character makes a difference.
Over time, the butterfly effect of all the contacts made by our teams, those they influence (teacher’s training teachers/parents training parents), and our books circulating by the hundreds of thousands make a difference. The butterfly effect.
The Maya Angelou quote, “If you know better you do better” is prominent on the cover of each version of Parenting with Love. Our work has momentum through our many years of working in communities. We hope you will support our work. We are now supporting communities in Ivory Coast so that people like the barber James can hold parenting talks in the evenings and have a safe, drop-in library for children in his shop. James chats up good parenting ideas to his patrons and (like it or not) they will leave his shop with a copy of Parenting with Love.
Would you like to read the Parenting with Love books? Click here to read the online version of the South African edition of Parenting with Love.
By Paul H. Sutherland
STEPi Founder and CEO