Teaching Kindness
I'm pretty sure when you have a child, they should come with a remote.
Think how sweet that would be: you could pause, rewind, and (being real here) fast forward. It would be amazing. First laugh? Relive 212 times. Major diaper blow out at Costco? Fast forward so fast.
At around 5 every night, the button I'm praying for is the mute button. My ears just get so dang tired. Everyone's hangry and it leads to arguing and disagreements and people just not being kind.
But I stumbled on something that's made a huge difference around here for now and thought I'd pass it on.
We were (grumpily) eating breakfast the other day when I remembered a book I'd bought and we hadn't read yet. I dug through the bookshelves and read the kids this beauty.
It's such a visual way to think of kindness- basically every person has a bucket that we can add drops to or dump by how we interact with them. I love that it includes an adult, that we have feelings too.
As we were talking about it afterwards I had a lightbulb and quickly made this poster we put in the kitchen. Then I cut out a billion drops out of blue paper.
Here's the Key:
Every time anyone does something that fills our bucket we
1) TELL THEM what they did that was great and
2) glue a drop on the poster.
It's the receiver of the kindness that glues on the drop, not the giver. This was an important distinction for us to make.
We just have the drops and glue stick on the counter right next to it so it's super easy.
The act of verbalizing gratitude is so beneficial to both the receiver and the giver.
I'm not exactly sure what we'll do when it's all filled. Better figure that one out... Any suggestions?
This obviously isn't the end of Fighting or a long term thing, but it's another tool in the old belt that will (hopefully) help shape who our children are becoming. It's a visual way to help the kids understand the concept.
But still, maybe a volume button would be good.
