The 9 Circles

FAMILY

This is about developing a close relationship with family members particularly the main family unit but also branching out to grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins etc. This is about on a daily basis doing whatever you can to help family members. So, for my three, it’s about helping out around the house with chores and showing love through making phone calls to family, doing birthday cards, buying presents, all that sort of thing. It’s also about building a strong relationship each day where possible based on conversations and so on.

This is about learning to find and keep good friends, whether it is from school, sports or neighbours. We teach our three to invite them around, have fun with them, swap toys and enjoy each other’s company. We teach them to learn to compromise and to include them in their daily thinking.

This is about making sure they have no fear of strangers. We teach them that just about everyone they meet who they don’t know is a good person. So, saying hello, waving to drivers who let you cross the road, helping beggars and buskers where we can, saying hi to the bus driver as we mount and saying thanks when you get off, letting people into a store ahead of us, that sort of thing. The key thing here is being relaxed with strangers and helping charities where we can. Around November each year, they give up a percentage of their toys to those less fortunate (in preparation for the arrival of Santa and Christmas presents in general, I have to say).

Deborah Donkin
16 September 2021 at 5:45 pm

In my family we live by certain values; these are: kindness, pride, honesty, and integrity. When forming relationships with anyone we can bring every interaction back to these values. Being kind is an obvious one, but being kind when others aren’t is a real challenge for most people, but it give is the opportunity to step back and try to understand why the other person is being unkind. Pride – have pride in who you are, your name, your family, your friends, and treat them with the dignity, and respect that is deserving from being proud of who you are and proud of who come from and proud of who you associate with. Always be honest, tell the truth, and in terms of integrity – we define that in our family as “doing the right thing when no-one’s looking”.

In terms of helping around the house – absolutely! We would be failures as parents if we sent our children out into the world without these basic skills, plus we are a team, we need to work as a team, help each other – especially when help is asked for. So many people are afraid to ask for help, we teach our kids to never be afraid to ask for help, and if someone asks them for help, absolutely do what you can to provide that help.

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