Published in 1986, and still popular today, Robert Fulghum’s bestseller “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” highlights the life lessons learned in early childhood. Play fair, don’t hit people, and hold hands and stick together were just a few of the axioms making Fulghum’s list.
“Take any one of these items,” he wrote, “and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life, or your work, or your government, or your world, and it holds true and clear and firm.”
A mid-June week at the beach with some of my children and grandchildren brought Fulghum’s book to mind. Parents and teenage siblings were passing on similar lessons to the little ones. Be nice to your cousins, don’t take a second bowl of ice cream until everyone has been served, and wash the sand off your feet before coming into the house were all mini-lessons for growth and maturity….