Parent Reading About Kites and Kids

Seeing the BIG Picture

Chapter 1: Choosing Core Values

You are probably asking what does flying kites have to do with raising children? Chapter 1 teaches how good parenting is like kite flying. Both activities require a certain amount of firmness – good parenting requires solid values that give lives purpose, and good kite flying requires a firm hand and solid footing. It is my hope that through practicing the princi-ples in this manual, you become so adept at kite flying (good parenting) that you fly so high that you can catch the stars and hold them in your hand. Are you ready for the adventure?

“To Catch a Star and Hold it in Your Hand”

Long ago, in the year of 1897, Marie and Pierre Curie reached into a drawer where a rock had been locked; and to their amazement, it had left an imprint. It was as though a star was locked in the rock. Because of the rock’s internal flame in the darkness of the drawer, an imprint of the object that had lain upon it was formed. Madam Marie Curie said of the unusual rock, “It was as though I held a star in my hand.”

After years of hard labor, the Curies unlocked the rock’s secret and discovered radium. Their labor on an unusual rock led to the life-saving discoveries of x-ray and radiation and altered the course of medical science forever.

May I present to you that our children are similarly locked in the drawer of our care. In the dark room called life, children are laid into our hands, and much like the x-ray process, the possibilities of imprinting on their lives are unlimited. But also like radium, if handled incorrectly, it has the power to destroy life. The power of parents and radium alike is unlimited. Good parenting has the power to change the fate of humanity. Conversely, poor parenting has the power to do irreparable damage. To turn the rock into something worthwhile is a painstaking and unrelenting job.