Growing Emotional Resilience and Navigating Through Childhood
with Heart, Humor & Optimism
BY Margo Judge
Updated 2009
H20 to Go! Copyright, 2004 By Margo Judge
All rights reserved. All material on this website protected. Permission granted for reprinting with Attribution
to Margo@MomOpinion Matters (TM)
Chapter 6 (cont'd)
Installment #41
Final Word: A News Story Presents A Perfect Opportunity to Ask The 'What-If' Question:
The beating of the 15 year old girl in Seattle watched by Security Guards
who did not intervene is a perfect opportunity to present our teens with the ‘what if’ question—For younger
teens- we can ask-What if you were a security guard? What would you have done? Would you have intervened even though it was
not in your job description or if your job description said you should not intervene? For older teens, we can push the envelope
and add-What if you thought you’d be fired for doing so, and your family really needed that money and security. What
would come first? Concern for your family, or stopping that beating? Why?
The wonderful thing about ’what-if questions is that they do not
demand advanced knowledge, they do not require educational aids, they do not need funding from government or private investment.
All a parent truly has to have in order to grow ethical and principled kids is a newspaper, television and/or radio and a
discussion. All the ‘what-if’ question’ needs is news, and current events—anything that our
kids will see or hear about that we can use as a ‘Life Lesson” or as my aunt used to call it when she saw me doing
it with my son, ‘the 30 second commercial.’ All moral dilemma and tough decision discussions about ethics
and principles present themselves every day, all around us. Our children are part of a larger community of values, even
if they do not live in a particular environment, and if that situation is not theirs, and even if they do not identify with
the persons involved.
A very central theme of H20 to Go! Is the idea of questioning that can grow thinking and
thinking that can grow wisdom. Wise people are also principled people and principled people are also emotional
secure individuals-courageous, resolute, and just.
