The Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine (Feb/March 2010) was sent home last week, and upon reading the magazine I found many wonderful articles that provided great ideas to ways to help our children, as well as needed help in areas of growth and development that our children are experiencing.
For the next few weeks, I thought it would be fun to highlight a different article from that magazine ~ you probably have already read these articles, however maybe they can serve as an extra reminder for things that we'd like to try.
Here is the first article, which was entitled 'It's a Two-Way Street' ~ Kindergartners learn respect from the way you treat them by Ellen Booth Church.
The author Ellen Church brought the concept of respect to an easy to understand level for our children's age and I wanted to highlight a few points from the article. If you'd like to read the entire article - click HERE.
Points from the article:
*We've heard the phrase, "respect your elders". To a 5 or 6 year old, what does that mean? It can be a vague concept. To begin to teach our children about respect, it helps to know that children at this stage often associate "respect" with "listening."
LISTEN and GROW
Respect works both ways. Children learn to respect by giving it, but also by receiving it.
5 and 6 year olds are mature enough to ask to be listened to and respected, just like us. This is a perfect time to teach respect by modeling it and offering it to our child(ren).
The art of LISTENING is probably one of the most important skills we can teach our child to help her/him grasp the concept of respect.
? ~ How do we feel when someone really listens to us?
Answer: We probably feel respected and appreciated!
Ideas & Tips:
* Model listening with your own child by making eye contact and listening without interruption.
* Give your child notice a few minutes before it's time to finish a game or project to let her know that her interests are important.
*On a walk, show respect for living things by carefully walking around small plants and bugs. Help your young one realize that trampling would harm them.
*Point out how good it makes people feel when she/he uses respectful phrases such as "please" and "thank-you".
Perhaps the best reason for showing respect has to do with caring. As we all know, we show someone respect because we care about them. Something important I gained from this article, is that Ellen Church stated, we will only gain true respect from children when they care about us and want to be respectful. Teaching our child(ren) how it feels to care, means that we have taken the first and most important step in teaching them about how to respect. It will be a natural outflow of their feelings.
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Look for next week's article on: 5 Easy Ways to Build a Reader!
