I am going to borrow a platform

Tweet

One of my friends here ( @sgbrown) has posted two great discussions. One, yesterday, included five things we should never say to our kids. She followed up by this tagged post of what we SHOULD say to our kids. She should be proud of herself. She has jogged my memory about working in a preschool for impoverished and developmentally delayed preschool. We learned new things every year. One thing to tell a child is:" You should be proud of yourself." and tell them why. "You should be proud of yourself, you tried a new food you were not sure you would like" . "You should be proud of yourself, you did not hit but used your words." There is not always going to be someone around to be proud of me, but I need to value my acts and be proud of myself. Also find concrete reasons for the pride. Secondly: Everyone makes mistakes. It is okay to make mistakes. Tell a child about a mistake you have made. Better yet, if the mistake hurt their feelings, say "I am sorry, I made a mistake." Teach children to identify their feelings. Label them. Give them pictures too about what the feeling looks like. Sad, happy, mad, sleepy, hungry, name the feeling. Then give them the tools to say " I am sad, and mad, because you used all the red paint and I did not get to make my picture." When children learn to identify and label their feelings they act out much less and they know that they will be heard. Set limits: My daughter, more so than my son, always wanted to have an extra time at doing something, or being somewhere. I might be very busy when my two year old would come up and say "hold me." I did not want to begin to resent the sweet little girl; I did not want to say "not now, I am too busy"so we developed a strategy that worked. See, I realized that I always had a little time. I might say to her, I can hold you for ten. Then I would take her in my lap and we would count slowly to ten. She was happy, I was happy. This worked for time on the swing and lots of other things. It took care of what she needed and it took care of what I needed. Since I counted out loud it also taught her as a side benefit, how to count by rote. I appreciate being able to springboard off my friend's ideas, she has such a neat way of dealing with people and their feelings and needs.