A Monthly Inspirational Viewpoint of Life’s Journeys with Sonia Wignall.
Episode Fourty Five
Teaching, Modeling and Preparing our children for Global Leadership
Leadership begins in the Sandbox, is the title of a book I am writing. The mission of the book is to inspire parents to see that the leadership preparation process of our children begins at birth.
The Sandbox Principle is a Biblical based principle. “Train up a child in the way he (or she) should go and when he (or she) is old they will not depart from it”. In other word we must teach, inspire, and model the principles of leadership to our children from a very young age. Pre-birth, reading to them, after birth, reading, teaching, enforcing, correcting, guiding, supporting and modeling.
This long game strategy is a “global” vision approach to childhood development; it starts with the Sandbox principle. With a “global” strategic mindset, we can better prepare our children to go into the world, not just their local communities, and make a sustainable and necessary impact.
Leadership training is a holistic process. Mind, body, soul and spirit in training for the Master, (God) use.
My young nephew attends a top private international school. I asked him about his friends at school and he named a specific friend which is a girl. I found this interesting, but for the wrong reason. I asked him why he liked this girl as a friend and he said “because she is kind”. Wow, his answer went straight to my heart. I wanted to meet this kind young girl, because she was impacting him.
To hear how he has learned at home, and at school, to measure friendship was beautiful. This also meant he had observed this young girl being kind to him and also to others children. She was in the process of becoming a great global leader. The school he attends has a “global” strategy to teach and prepare the children for global leadership.
Two of my favorite Sandbox leadership models are the Indian father who also gave his daughter extra money every day to take to school in case there is a child in the school that needs lunch but has no money to buy it. Powerful influence on the way his daughter will see and serve others globally.
The second Sandbox leadership model is a recent social media post of a young Chinese kindergarten boy that noticed his friend dozing off while sitting right next to him. He reached over and gently put his friend’s head on his shoulder so that his friend could continue sleeping, but more comfortably. Again, powerful global Sandbox leadership in action.
The culture, age, education or economic circumstances is not the frame or the foundation for our children’s leadership training. It is us, the parents, extended family, educational atmosphere and community that helps to engage, develop and prepare our children for future “global” leadership.
Spirit of Leadership and Inclusion
In the sandbox, our children learn to invite and include other children to the play experience. If they are taught and model exclusivity or racism, they will tell children that do not look or sound like them that they cannot get in the sandbox and play, that they “do not belong”. They may go as far as telling other children in their limited language to “get out”.
If they are modeled anger and mean words, they will repeat those words and emotions in the sandbox. If violence is their home or community atmosphere or engagement, they will throw toys, hit, push, bite and throw sand in the face of other children in anger.
We teach, model and lead. Our children learn to follow.
The Intentional Educator
One of the many patterns I have observed in the children attending our STEM camps is the educational intentionality to the parents. 90% of parents that send our children to our camps do so intentionally.
One specific new parent kept wanting to be assured that her child would be in a “culturally diverse” environment. She was focused on the long term leadership strategy.
Another parent of a child with a communication challenge, has had the child in our camps for the past few years. The family is affluent enough to take the child anywhere. In addition to our camp, the child is enrolled in other supplementary developmental activities. The mother shared with me that her family is “intentional” about her child’s “holistic” development, because outside is “unforgiving”. In other words she must use as much internal as well as external developmental tools available to prepare him for independent global living and leadership.
She too understood the assignment and was strategically playing the long game.
The Global Impact
Impactful leadership leads from the heart. Great leaders are not “culturally” afraid. They are culturally welcoming. A person cannot be a great global leader and harbor fear, hate or a spirit or a culture of exclusion. They will lead from a place of fear, arrogance and limitation. They will miss golden opportunities to influence and make global impacts.
What they were created and assigned to do by God, will not be able to accomplish. They will lack the capacity to serve well globally.
The Sandbox is a learning incubator.
It is a starting place of spiritual, emotional and leadership growth. It is there that our children practice, at an early age, which has been taught and modeled to them, and how they understood it, up to that point. Playing alone with others in the sandbox, they are learning to develop and apply small but significant leadership skills. Their capacity is being extended as they take agency of decision and response.
What is your strategic long game plan for your children’s educational experience?
What is their “Sandbox” leadership style?
Sonia M. Wignall
Sonia M. Wignall is Co-Founder//Board Chair, Diaspora Global Foundation. A STEM Education Organization. www.leanintostem.org. She is also a Freelance Cultural and Lifestyle Writer. Her articles and monthly column “Perspective”, and “Perspective on the Arts” can be found here.