Dharma for Kids... WWBD?

Up until recently, my Zen practice has been my own. I have read some Buddhist stories to my daughter, and allowed her to explore the books we have at her leisure... but I never decided that I was going to "make her" Buddhist. As she prepares to participate in the upcoming precepts ceremony, I wonder if she is drastically unprepared.

A few weeks ago, there was an article posted on The Buddhist News Channel about teaching Dharma to children. I flagged it as something I wanted to read later. With all of this "precepts preparation" going on, it seemed a good time to read it. The article, How would Buddha handle your kids, has simple advice which took a great weight off of my shoulders:

The Buddha's advice to parents is straightforward - help your children become generous, virtuous, responsible, skilled and self-sufficient adults [see DN 31 and Sn II.4].

Teaching Buddhism to one's children does not mean giving them long lectures about dependent  co-arising, or forcing them to memorize the Buddha's lists of the eightfold  this, the ten such-and-suches, the seventeen so-and-sos. It simply means giving  them the basic skills they'll need in order to find true happiness. The  rest will take care of itself.

The article references the Ambalatthikarahulovada Sutta [Instructions to Rahula at Mango Stone], which recounts Buddha's teaching to his son Rahula upon catching him in a lie. The teaching is SO practical... In the beginning, Buddha uses a series of metaphors and questions to explain that a person who takes no shame in telling a deliberate lie throws away whatever merit or skill they might have accumulated through contemplative practice. The teaching goes on:

Before you perform a bodily, mental, or verbal act...

1. Think about it.
2. Do you think it will be skillful or unskillful?
3. If you think it will be unskillful, abandon it... don't do it.
4. If you think it will be skillful, try it.

After you perform a bodily, mental or verbal act...

1. Think about it.
2. Were the results skillful or unskillful?
3. If the act resulted in suffering (by self, others or both) it was unskillful. Confess it. Practice restraint. Abandon it.
4. If the act resulted in happy consequences and joyful results, you may continue it.

Buddhism is not meant to be theoretical... You can read the dharma and study the sutras, but the point of study is to take the teachings on in a practical sense. When we had our precepts preparation meetings last year, each week we were asked to reflect on two precepts, what they meant to us, how we might apply them to our lives, what "came up" for us around them, etc. We would then sit in a circle and talk about them.

The children's precepts are a bit different than the ones we take as adults:

1. Do not harm, but cherish all life
2. Do not take what is not given but respect the things of others
3. Do not lie but speak the truth
4. Do not waste but conserve energy and natural resources
5. Do not stay angry or hold grudges
6. Do not cling to things that belong to you, but practice generosity and the joy of sharing

The precepts we take are phrased a bit differenly than they are in other places... I suppose the fact that they are prefixed with the words "Do Not..." makes them seem rather authoritative. Paul mentions this in his recent comment:

I have to ask about these precepts. I agree with all of them, yet the features of Buddhism that have most attracted me are meditation, following the Eightfold Path, and developing one's inner being in a direction of enlightenment.

My Buddhist reading has been eclectic and self directed, but I haven't run into precepts before. I guess that frankly I'm a little concerned that it starts to have the feeling of the Ten Commandments, and the dogmatic rather than experiential approach I was familiar with growing up as a Catholic.

On their face, I suppose they would come off a bit authoritative... but we are not taught to use them that way. We are taught to try them on. We are taught that we can grow into them. "Do not harm but cherish all life" doesn't mean we have to be vegetarian... but we might find that we end up there naturally. We are in constant relationship with our precepts... sometimes we might be totally mindless about conserving energy, for example. At other times, we might be more deliberate... turning off lights that aren't being used... limiting the time we are in the shower, washing clothes in cold water, etc.

As we discuss them, I'm looking for ways to make them practical for my daughter, and to have her think about the consequences of breaking a precept instead of looking at them simply as "you must/must not..." rules or prescriptions. What happens to you when you stay angry? How does it make you feel? Does it help? What would help?