If you could only teach one thing?

If you were only able to teach your child one thing, what would it be?

For me it would be to teach Naomi that the world is bigger than she is.  I guess that might need a bit of explanation, but it sums up how I feel, I want my daughter to become aware of the needs of others.

In this house we use a lot of fair trade products (bananas, chocolate, sugar, clothes) and  want her to grow up understanding why.  That nothing we use is so important that it is worth allowing others to be abused or taken advantage of.  If we can't buy something fairly traded we try to either go without or buy it from somewhere that sourced it locally.

I want her to understand that the environment is important too, that we have a duty to try and care for it.  I want her to know that this is why I am militant about recycling as much as possible and that this is why we buy eco-friendly cleaning products and recycled kitchen roll and notebooks and why we write our shopping lists on the back of old envelopes.

I want her to understand that we try and get as much as we can from charity shops and freecycle, not just because it is good to save money (although it is) but because we need to try and stop this stuff ending up on a landfill site and rotting away.

I want her to grow up to be financially responsible, not just because it will stand her in good stead for life (which it will) but also because I want her to give to charity, I want her to realise that others need her money as much (if not more) than she does.

She will learn all about the child we sponsor through Compassion UK so that she realises not everyone leads the privileged life she does and that when I say she isn't allowed something because we can't afford it (which I will, her Dad and I are not made of money) that at least she has a roof over her head, clothes to wear and food to eat.

That is me though, what would you like to teach your children?