Week
4 of April: Unselfishness and Sensitivity
In
Connection with Richard and Linda Eyre
Editor's
Note:
This month the Meridian Family Value of the month is UNSELFISHNESS AND SENSITIVITY.
Click
here to read this month's overview article). Each week during the month
we will post an update in Meridian, illustrating a couple of the Eyres' favorite
methods for teaching the powerful value of LOVE to each age group. Remember
that you can also go to http://www.valuesparenting.com/
for still more ideas and teaching methods. Thanks for your interest
and participation. There are tens of thousands of parents concentrating
on this value this month. It is a way of saving this disrespectful society
of ours ― one family at a time! Send us your feedback, and if
you want a free children's CD on the value of Honesty, see the instructions
at the bottom of this article.
Methods forTeaching Unselfishness and Sensitivity to Pre School
age Children (second weekly installment on methods)
Bedtime Chats
A relaxed atmosphere can be a great help for discussions involving feelings. We’ve discussed what a good moment bedtime can be for communication, and mentioned various fun questions to ask children at bedtime. Try during this month to expand this idea a little so that it includes the expression of more specific feelings.
Start it off yourself by sitting on the edge of a child’s bed and volunteering how you have felt about various things during the day. Let the child respond in kind. Prompt him or her along with questions, encouragement, and compliments.
Don’t expect feelings to flow as freely as you may wish on the first few efforts. Be content to talk about your feelings a few times and be patient about your child’s expressions.
The only problem with “bedtime chats” is that we parents are sometimes more tired than our children.
*
One night Richard sat on the edge of our son’s bed, told him a short story, and then asked how he was feeling.
Richard decided to lie down by the child while he told him about some things at school that day.
The next thing Richard knew, it was morning and our son was waking him up!
“You slept there all night, Dad! You were so funny. I was telling you about school and you kept saying ‘Uh-huh,’ and then you just started snoring! I went up and told Mom and she said, ‘Just let Dad sleep. He needs it.’”
The “How Does He Feel?” Game
Tell your children the following scenarios and ask the questions at the end of each. Make up more of your own.
- Janie was in the car with all her friends on the way to preschool. Emily started talking about her birthday party on Saturday. Julie said she loved clowns and couldn’t wait to see the magic tricks. Jodie said she liked the cute invitation Emily had brought. Janie realized that she was the only one in the car who had not received an invitation to Emily’s party. How do you think she felt?
- After playing with trucks all afternoon together, David decided he wanted to play house. He wanted to the daddy and wanted Jeremy to be the little boy. “I don’t want to be the little boy,” yelled Jeremy, “I want to be the daddy!” “Well, I don’t want to play with you anymore then and I’m going home,” announced David. How do you think Jeremy felt?
Talk about possible solutions for the above dilemmas (or other you may think of).
Methods for Elementary School Age
The “Whose Problem?” Verbal Exercise
This will help children react less to the cruelty of other children and be more careful of being cruel themselves. Whenever an example or instance of teasing or meanness or peer abuse comes to your attention, take the opportunity to explain that children who behave in such ways almost always do so because they are mistreated by someone else or because they feel insecure. Get in the habit of asking, “Why do you think he did that?” or “Whose problem is that?” Explore possibilities. (Maybe his parents are unkind to him. Maybe his big brother picks on him. Maybe he’s not doing well in school and needs to prove himself by showing he’s bigger or stronger.) Discuss the possibilities in a sensitive empathetic way.
“Create Your Own”
This activity will help children express their own unique feelings and enhance their creativity. Instead of buying birthday cards, “get well soon” cards, Mother’s Day cards, and so on, encourage children to make their won, wiring prose or poetry to sensitively express how they feel about another person. Praise their every attempt.
The Adjective Game
This game assists children in defining their feelings and increases their ability to verbalize those feelings. As a family make a long list of adjectives that describe how people can feel. Start with the most basic feelings, such as “happy,” “sad,” “mad,” “frustrated,” “embarrassed,” and move to more specific and interesting adjectives, such as “murky,” “jumpy,” “agitated,” “perplexed,” “elated.”
Try to list at least one hundred words before you are finished. Explain that a good vocabulary helps us figure out our feelings as well as express them.
Hang the list in a visible place and invite family members to add to it whenever they think of another good descriptive adjective or whenever they feel emotion that is not described by any word on the list.
Methods for Adolescents
Miss a Meal for a Purpose
This can help children empathize physically and become more acquainted with the basic idea of trying to feel others’ needs. From age eight, and often earlier, children are capable of fasting for at least one meal. With the kind of discussion and observations that parents can add, this can be one of the most basic and meaningful early empathetic experience they have. Talk about the feeling of hunger as it is experienced and about how it might feel if it went on for days if they, like nearly one-third of the children of the world, went to bed hungry each night.
This method is particularly instructive if you can use the one you save by missing a meal to help someone who is hungry. Some families sponsor a child in a Third World country through one of the relief organizations; they receive pictures and letters from a real human being who is being fed by the money they save through fasting.
As children come to understand and appreciate the idea of missing a meal to help someone else, they will feel a physical empathy, which can be a good start toward feeling the deeper forms of emotional, social, and even spiritual empathy. As you talk about how hunger feels, ask also how they think people feel who have no friends or whose parents do not care about them.
Sponsoring a Child in an Underdeveloped Country
This gives children the chance to serve others who are both very different and very far away from themselves. Another way to make service essentially anonymous is to give it to people who are too far away or too far removed from you to “pay you back” in any way. Various organizations offer opportunities (for just a few dollars a month) to sponsor a child — paying for physical support and often for education.
You can make your support strictly anonymous, receiving information only from the organization and not corresponding directly with the child. But there is so much enjoyment and so much benefit in having your children correspond directly with the child that you may want to settle for “semi-anonymous” service in this case.
Parents, thanks for being with us this month, and for focusing on the important value of Unselfishness and Sensitivity. See you the first week of May for the NEW Meridian Family Value of the Month!
Closing Note: Many have asked if there are actual teaching tools to assist parents in teaching the Meridian family value of the month to their children. The Eyres have been involved with a series of values-teaching CDs called Alexander's Amazing Adventures, which give 5-14 year old children a vicarious (and dramatic) experience with each month's value. By special arrangement, Meridian readers who have been following this column and participating in the value of the month can now receive, as a free gift, the HONESTY CD from this series. Simply send a self-addressed, stamped 5 X 7 or 8 X 10 envelope (the padded ones are best) to the Eyres at 1098 Augusta Way, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108 and they will send you the gift CD. (You will need to put $0.87 [87cents] in stamps or postage on your return envelope.) Please respond only if you have been reading and following the column, and please do not ask for more than one copy of the CD. We hope this gift will help make the value-of-the-month concept even more effective within your family.