This
activity teaches children about priorities. CHUMS is
not here to pass judgment and tell children (or anyone else)
what their priorities should be. Kids have a lot to handle while
they're growing up. When a parent with a dibilitating disease
is added to that, the kids have to understand that it's okay
to let some things drop - they can't, and are not expected to
juggle it all.
CHUMS
offers this exercise only as an example. You are encouraged
to conduct this activity at home with your kids. Teach them
that the biggest, most important things are the ones they have
to keep up in the air - keep juggling. If some of the smaller
concerns or responsibilities they have fall to the side for
the sake of keeping the bigger ones in the air, that's okay.
STEP
ONE: We all have concerns and responsibilities that we have to
juggle. We are all pretty good at handling those responsibilities.
STEP
TWO: As we get older, we find that there are more things in our
lives that we have to juggle. We realize early in life that
it's very important to keep our grades in school up (for example).
Usually, we can juggle that along with some of the other concerns
or responsibilities pretty easily.
STEP
THREE: We
also realize very early in life that our friends are important
to us. Now we have a lot to juggle. If we continue to concern
ourselves with everything we used to, we might not be able to
maintain those important relationships. We're still managing
to keep everything else up in the air, but we can damage important
relationships by letting them fall.
STEP
FOUR: Sometimes,
we might have to let something little go in order to maintain
and nurture the really important things in our life.
STEP
FIVE: When
something really big comes into our life, we may really have
to rearrange our priorities. We may discover that all of the
little things that we were once concerned with, we just can't
keep juggling anymore. As long as we can manage to keep juggling
the really big things though, we'll experience some degree of
balance in our life.
