There are so many things I try to teach my daughter from day to day... things that I believe are important to her well-being now, and in the future. I could, I think, fill this list with a hundred entries, and still come back later banging my head against the desk with the knowledge that I'd forgotten something... or many things. So for now, I'm going to keep it to five lessons that have been a staple thus far. These are not, in my opinion, the only lessons any child should learn, but I do believe that they should be universal.

True and honest courtesy is essential.
All too often, I see people being massively cruel to each other. While it seems to me that it happens more online, which I explain away as people forgetting that on the other side of that screen is another human being, I can also see it in normal life. Common courtesy isn't common, as the saying goes, and that's a crying shame. It's my belief that if each person in the world stopped to think about his or her fellows for just a few minutes every day, and paired those thoughts with compassion, regardless of race, color, creed, or whatever boundaries might be in place - if everyone just treated each other with "common" courtesy, this world would be a hell of a lot nicer to live in... and maybe I wouldn't be so afraid for my daughter's future.

Tolerance and acceptance are necessary.
I don't believe that my daughter has to believe every single thing anyone else does. Indeed, I've tried very hard to encourage her to form her own opinions and beliefs about things without trying to mold her to my own. But I believe that in order to make this world better, she, and I, have to have tolerance and acceptance for others. Hate will never do anything but tear this world apart.

Self-confidence is key.
This is something I've always lacked, and in that void, I've been able to see just how desperately it's needed. I've always wondered, and believed, that the downward spirals I face every so often are linked to the fact that I feel worthless most of the time. As my daughter grows older, I'm going to try my best to find the magic combination of encouragement, love, and teaching in order to help her find her own self-confidence. My parents tried their hardest, and still do, for me, but I wonder, sometimes, if they just didn't quite have the right mix.

Learning is important, and neverending.
I've pointedly told my daughter the truth - that I learn things from everywhere, even today. I've pointed out to her that even she has taught me things. But the lesson isn't so much that learning goes on forever as it is that opening your mind to the learning will enable you to forever grow as a person, so that you are always a little better than you were even a minute before.

Being the fastest isn't being the best.
Certainly, fastest is best in racing, be it footraces, horse races, car races. But in schoolwork, homework, reading, writing, every other aspect in the world, fastest is not best. Slow and steady makes for a more thorough, thought-out approach to things, and keeps slapdash mistakes to an absolute minimum. Do I want her to zip through books, as I did? No. Not unless that is the comfortable speed for her to read so that she takes in everything, and can understand it. It's no use reading Tolkien at the speed of light if all you get from it is "hole, ground, hobbit." Not when the first bit of The Hobbit is, in my opinion, one of the more lyrical: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."