Cultivating an atmosphere/culture that us as parents want to live in .... could probably be summed in the following:
-Honor & Respect
-Sense of Community
-Personal Responsibility
-Freedom
-Love
-Lead by heart not external rules
-A culture of life
Culture is basically our agreed upon set of standards/core values. They are values we agree upon, that we share. Example: 'Your life is your responsibility and my life is my responsibility.' Meaning that I'll live and love to help you grow and mature any way that I can, but there is a line where I stop.
Culture is an environment of agreements that we practice back and forth, give and take, and exchange with each other.
Behaviors on the outside are not the goal, the behaviors are the expression of the culture we live in. Behavior becomes culture when it shows up in our children - they are now the carriers of our culture/value system.
We need to have a strategy in building a culture of our values, and it begins with doing what you say. We need to raise our children to be adults, who are ready to live, ready to love, and who can handle freedom.
It is often challenging as our children age to try so hard to give them everything we didn't have, that we forget to give them ourselves. Not just ourselves, but loving and enjoying them as we go so our home becomes a culture of love, life, and safety. Learning some key factors to imparting these things to our children is a necessity, and that's what we are doing here.