As a mom of two boys, ages 10 and 14, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to today’s topic—how to raise kids with good character. With my elder son now firmly in his teens, I’ve got this sense that my time with him is running out. My guest for this episode, Greg Marcus, who calls himself a recovering workaholic, has quite an interesting personal story to tell about transforming himself into a better person. We delve into how he actually improved his career by cutting his hours to be more available to his family. But the main focus of our chat is the idea of raising a mensch, which is a Yiddish term for a person of outstanding character. Greg is the author of a book called The Spiritual Practice of Good Actions: Finding Balance Through the Soul Traits of Mussar. We talk about how to bring the principles of mindfulness to our kids’ character development, and why it’s important to avoid the trap of focussing too heavily on our kids’ behaviour and not our own.
Love our work? Please check out our Patreon Campaign!