Feature
Family Offices
Teaching Children to Love Being Sons & Daughters
One summer when our son Rafi was just two years old, June and I vacationed with my brother and sister-in-law at the New Jersey shore. As the five of us were crossing the main thoroughfare one afternoon, Rafi threw a tantrum. In that dangerous location, with cars and trucks speeding by a foot or two away from us, he was completely out of control.
My brother scolded me harshly for not having disciplined the boy better. If dogs could be trained to wait patiently to cross a street, he said, why couldn’t I teach a two-year-old boy to do it? Needless to say, when my brother’s own children came into this world, he learned that children are not dogs.
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Vigen Guroian was, until his retirement, Professor of Religious Studies in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. His books include Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classic Stories Awaken a Child's Moral Imagination (2002) and The Orthodox Reality: Culture, Theology, and Ethics in the Modern World (Baker Academic, 2018).
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