joyfilled productions

For example, if you want your child to be polite to guests when they visit your house.  You can tell a simple story about the bear family – mama bear, father bear and their 2 cubs.  Each cub can have an interesting personality to make the story more exciting.  Your story can include one cub being rude to all the guests and some of the natural consequences of that (parents not being very keen to have that cub over for playdates with their cubs perhaps).  Then how the cub learns to be kind and welcoming to guests and some natural consequences of that and how everyone felt when it all worked out.

Whenever I am stuck and trying to figure out how to teach something, I find this method helps my child learn in a way that is fun for them.  From a science perspective, until age 9, a child’s cognitive brain is not well developed yet, so stories is a way they can retain the information more effectively.  Also it creates a lovely connection time between us parents and our child…and forces us to use some creativity in our day….I find I even have fun with it and am sometimes surprised where the stories take us.

Why not try telling a story out and see what happens….it makes car rides much more fun.

I remember my mother telling me I could do anything I wanted to do.  I shrugged her off, but I have to admit, that is one of the key voices in my head ‘I can do anything I want to do.’  We are creating voices in our children’s subconscious so we may as well make them positive ones.

Taking the time to watch our children and reflect what we see is the best kind of reinforcement as it is very specific so the child can tell it is true.  For example, I noticed you put your plate into the dishwasher last night and tonight, you are such a great contributor to our household.  Thank you.  Or I loved the funny story you told at dinner, I love to laugh.  You have a wonderful sense of humour.  Catching them being thoughtful, kind, sharing is wonderful – just watch your child glow as you reflect back to them what you see.

I also notice how children are much happier when there is transition time between one activity to the next activity.  And I think I am happier when I have some transition time.  I notice it more in others, when my husband comes up from work to dinner, I can see his head is sometimes still at work, rather than with us.  I suspect the same is true of me when I move from one thing to another without transition time.