Teaching Preschoolers about Traditionalism

Recently on a Facebook group I belong to, someone asked the question "Anybody have any suggestions on how I can explain Traditional Conservatism to my kids?". I sent him a reply with some ideas, but I thought this is a good question that I would like to expand upon.

The first thing to remember is that a child's world is small, very small and it expands slowly. And the way things are taught to a child should be logical, from small to big, from personal to impersonal, from simple to complex. This is true for all teaching. You should never set your student up to fail if you can help it. It was explained to me as never give your students the final year exam at the start of the year. Instead build them up step by step until they can pass the exam.

The three principles of Traditional Conservatism are:

Tradition
Order
Family

Of course for preschoolers there is no need to tell them what the principles are. They can learn what they are first and then learn the names later. Remember, from small to large, from personal to impersonal, from simple to complex.

Tradition
The best way to bring out the importance of tradition is to live them and talk about them. Celebrate the important dates in your families lives, in your community and your countries life. At this age it is best just to do and to tell them how important it is, too much explanation will simply be confusing. Remember to have your own family traditions, not just for for the big occasions but also for everyday living. Have a sports day, or a music day, build your own family traditions. Make life both exciting and comforting.

Order
Order is about things being in their rightful place, preschoolers both love and hate it. Much of this is simply what you would teach preschoolers anyway. To make sense of the world they need to categorize things, to put them in order. Encourage that and let them know that things have their rightful place. Nearly everything you teach a preschooler about involves order, putting things in their rightful place.

Family
Talk about family history, visit family, show photos, talk about when you were growing up in the olden days, visit graves. Do not cut yourself or your preschooler off from the past. Let them know that the past created today, that it created them. That family is about love and blood.

For most people the things mentioned here will happen anyway, but it is good to have a reminder or to point out something that you might not have thought of.

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