Members of Headquarters Battalion spoke with Fort Belvoir Elementary School students Tuesday morning about the fifth pillar in the Character Counts program, "Caring."
Headquarters Battalion personnel emphasized that caring has several forms, being kind to Family members and classmates, but also caring about themselves and responsibilities the children have like doing their homework and doing chores at home.
"When you do your homework, don't speed through it so you can get it done and go play," said Capt. Daniel Tucker, Headquarters and Headquarters Company Special Activities, commander. "Take a little time and make sure it's done right so your teacher can know whether or not you care about your own work."
Tucker visited with sixth grade students and told them it's important to put care into their chores because it will spread into every other task they are responsible for.
"Cleaning your room is a reflection of how much you care," Tucker said. "Putting all your clothes under your bed and when your parents check you have to go back and redo it. I asked which option they prefer and the children said, 'Do it right the first time.'"
Maj. Carolyn Portee, Headquarters Battalion Operations Officer, spoke with the sixth-grade class taught by Laura Nikander. Portee told the students that caring does not always mean loving someone because you don't have to love someone to care about them.
As an example, Portee said the children don't have to love the Soldiers that are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan to care about them.
"We talked about how you show an individual who is deployed that you still care about them," said Portee. "We talked about care packages, and one of the girls said her classmates cared enough about her to make a video with her that she could send to her dad."
Caring also means doing something you don't like to do, according to Portee. She told Nikander's class that her fiancée was uneasy about visiting his mother, who had Alzheimer's disease, while she was in the hospital because he doesn't like hospitals.
Portee told him to go because the gesture meant a lot to his mother.
"He didn't want to visit her because he thought, since she had Alzheimer's, she wouldn't know that he wasn't coming to visit," said Portee. "So, I explained to him that, even though she has Alzheimer's, just because you forget stuff doesn't mean you don't have feelings. She had feelings and enjoyed his visits even though he didn't like seeing her sick. He had to do that to show her he cared."
The previous four pillars the students have learned about are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility and fairness. Tucker and Portee said caring leads to implementing the previous four character pillars into a person's life because, if they care about themselves and others, they will care about the other pillars.
"If you don't care you're not going to do any of them," said Tucker. "All you are doing is going through the motions. Caring is the feeling behind the other pillars."
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