The Value of Unselfishness and Sensitivity
(And How to Get Involved with Joy School this Fall with Your Preschooler)
In connection with Richard and Linda Eyre

Meridian is pleased to have a partnership with Richard and Linda Eyre on this value of the month concept. As many readers know, the Eyres are the authors of the New York Times #1 bestseller Teaching Your Children Values, and they will write our Meridian Value update articles at the first of each month. If you are new to the Family Value program, click here.

Unselfishness and Sensitivity

The value for April, Unselfishness and Sensitivity, is a particularly important principle because it has so much to do with maturity and with the key skill of treating other people well. We define this value as: Becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered. Learning to feel with and for others. Empathy, tolerance, brotherhood. Sensitivity to needs in people and situations.

We suggest that you take a few minutes and formulate a basic, simple plan of how you can focus in on this value with your children during the month ahead. The way to do this is to click here and go to the four archive articles on methods for teaching unselfishness and sensitivity to preschoolers, elementary age kids, and adolescents.

As you browse those articles, cut and paste the methods you like best (and that you think would work best with your kids) into a document on your computer. Then print it out, and keep it around the house during the month to remind you to implement the ideas with your kids.

Just to get you warmed up, let us give you a sample of one of our favorite ideas for elementary and adolescent children. And then, for those of you with preschoolers, let us share the concept of joy schools — the best way we have ever found to help preschool children learn unselfishness and sensitivity.

A couple of favorite methods for elementary age:

The Secret Buddies Game

This game helps children shift their attention to another family member and experience the satisfaction of doing things for that person anonymously. Put each family member’s name (including parents’) in a hat and let each person draw a name secretly. Spend the week ahead playing “secret buddies,” during which each person tries to find little things he or she can do for his buddy anonymously (from carefully anonymous notes, compliments, and gifts, to fixing or cleaning secretly). At the end of the week give a prize for “best deeds” and another for “best secrecy.”

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.

A couple of favorite methods for young adolescents:

The Mirror-Window Lesson

This can help younger adolescents conceptualize and appreciate the difference between self-centeredness and extra-centeredness. Try to get a piece of one-way glass (mirror from one side, window from the other). If you can’t find one, a plain piece of glass will do. Point out that when it is dark behind the glass, it is a mirror ? all you see in it is yourself. When it is light behind it, you see through it ? you see other people and not your own reflection.

Point out to your children that life is much the same. When our minds are dark and self-centered, we only see ourselves (“What’s best for me?” “How will this affect me?” “What can this person do for me?”) In this mode we are always unhappy and self-conscious. But when we light up and look at other people ? trying to listen, trying t o see their needs, and so one ? we “lose ourselves” and quit worrying about ourselves and feeling self-conscious.

The Listen-and-Paraphrase-and-Add-Feeling Game

Introduce the following listening game: One family member asks another what happened to him that day. The second person tells some experience, and the first person repeats back or paraphrases the experience, visualizing it as though it had happened to him. He then indicates how he thinks the other person felt.

For example, twelve-year-old James says to ten-year-old Pat, “What happened today?” Pat says, “Oh, we had a math test and I thought it would be easy, but the teacher asked a lot of questions form the chapter I didn’t study and hardly any from the chapter I did!”

James responds, “So you thought you were prepared for the test, because you did study, but you mostly studied one chapter, and when you took the test, most of it was on another chapter — one that you hadn’t studied. I’ll bet you felt kind of frustrated, and maybe you felt a little bit mad at your teacher for tricking you or for not telling you what chapter to study.”

It’s surprising how much children enjoy this kind of discussion (once they get the hang of it) with their siblings or with their parents.

And there is no better training for the development of real concern.

And now our favorite method for preschoolers — Joy School

Joy School

Did you know that there was a do-it-yourself preschool, costing less than a tenth of what most preschools cost, where moms rotate as teacher and where three and four year olds, instead of being crammed with early academics, get truly prepared for kindergarten by learning the social and emotional skills we call joy? It's called Joy School, and it has been around for more than 20 years, and been used by hundreds of thousands of preschoolers and their moms.

It is far and away the best and most complete way we have ever found to help small children to be unselfish and sensitive, and to help them learn all the joys that will make their lives happier and prepare them socially and emotionally for kindergarten.

The lesson plans for Joy School are so complete and so easy that any mom can present them to kids with confidence and competence. And they are all on line so that they can be downloaded, complete with the music, art projects, games and stories that make them so effective and so fun.

If you have a preschooler and want to look into Joy School for the fall, just go to www.joyschools.com. It will not only help you teach your preschool child the value of unselfishness and sensitivity, but it will also prepare him or her for all of the other values as well, because, as you will see, the 12 "joys" of the Joy School curriculum are actually just the 12 values of this column and of the book Teaching Your Children Values — but they are reduced to the preschool level and portrayed as joys to feel instead of as values to live.

Joy Schools are well-established (more than 100,000 parents have been teaching) and truly unique preschools. The central belief of Joy School is simply that children, while in their most impressionable years, should be taught life's most important thing — various capacities for joy. A related belief is that children suffer not from being started in academic learning too late, but in starting too soon, before they have a basis of social and emotional self-esteem.

Do-it-yourself Joy Schools involve from 3 to 6 mothers who rotate as teacher, holding Joy School in their homes twice a week by using the detailed lesson plans from this site. These lesson plans include all the music, stories, games, and activities to learn and teach one kind of Joy each month. Get all the details and learn how to sign up at www.joyschools.com.

The Joy School curriculum is built around joy — with the philosophy that happy children become strong students and well adjusted adults. For three- and four-year-olds, "J.Q." (Joy Quotient) is more important than I.Q. (Time after time we are told by kindergarten and first grade teachers that Joy School graduates do better in school than kids coming out of pushy, early-academics preschools.)

So, have a great month and enjoy your focus on the value (and the joy) of unselfishness and sensitivity!

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 three regular 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.