Parenting Value: Unselfishness

Dinner Topics for Tuesday

Value of Unselfishness & Sensitivity

Richard and Linda Eyre
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.

Introduction
Some children have a natural and seemingly inherent sense of caring and sensitivity. Such cases are rather rare, however, and the self-centered "surrounded by mirrors" perspective of life is typical of most children, particularly adolescents. In fact most of the problems teenagers face (whether taking the form of rebellion or of extreme shyness and withdrawal) stem from their rather intense preoccupation with self.
Nevertheless, children can begin to learn sensitivity and unselfishness at a very young age, and they should learn it as a skill and a capacity as well as a value.
Children have difficulty empathizing and applying their own feelings to others. A child can feel crushed one day because Jimmy didn't invite him to his birthday party and the next day forget to include someone who looks lonely in the basketball game at recess. Adolescents love to borrow clothes, but many hate to lend them and often forget to return them or to "repair the damage." It takes real effort on the part of parents and sometimes a very long time for most children to realize that the world does not revolve around them, that others' feelings are crucial and that there is a great deal to be learned from giving up something they really want for the sake of someone else. 

General Guidelines
Give responsibility. Try to bring out your children's appreciation and empathy for the difficulties and challenges of others. A recent Harvard study pointed up an interesting connection between how much responsibility children were given and their tendencies to be altruistic and extra-centered. Apparently children who are given everything but responsibility not only become spoiled but actually tend to begin to lose their sense of caring and concern.
During this month reemphasize and redefine the responsibilities you give your children and the dependability you expect of them. Discuss, whenever you get the chance, the responsibilities that others have and how we must be sensitive to the burdens other people have.
Teach by example and active listening. Show children the attitude of empathy and the kinds of sensitivity that you want them to mirror. Try to make your own listening and caring more obvious. One way to do this is "active listening." Instead of the normal parental tendencies of directing, managing, and interrogating children, try to really hear what children say. Paraphrase back to them what they have said in a way that reassures them that you heard what they said, have understood it, and are concerned about it. This technique is sometimes also called Rogerian technique after Carl Rogers, the pioneering psychologist who found that people of any age will tell you more if you listen rather than ask. 

The practice of active listening will, in addition to encouraging your children to say more to you, set a profound example of the kind of sensitivity you hope they themselves will develop.
Say, "I'm sorry." Show your children your sensitivity and help them feel sensitive toward you. Whenever you have made a mistake or misjudgment or even been a little insensitive to a child's needs (through your own busy-ness, preoccupation, etc.), go to the child and say you're sorry for not being more in tune and sensitive to what they were worried about or needed.
Make an effort to tell your children how the things they do make you feel. This will help children be more aware of your feelings and be more sensitive toward them. If a teenager tells you that you are weird, tell him that that hurts your feelings. Sometimes children think of parents as people on whom they can vent their feelings without making a dent. Tell them not only the hurtful things but the positive things. For example, "It makes me feel so happy when I see you cleaning things up without being asked or helping your little brother with his homework."
Remember that unselfishness does not come naturally. Try to maintain your patience as you implement this "month." Everyone, although in varying degrees, is born with a certain amount of selfishness. There is no quick fix for learning to be unselfish. It is a process that takes thinking and practicing and a certain amount of maturity to develop. 

Praise. Reinforce -- and cause repetition of -- unselfish behavior. Heap praise on signs or symptoms or even brief glimpses of unselfishness in children of any age! Let's face it, an act of simple sharing in children -- particularly small ones -- is cause for genuine celebration. And it also calls for praise and recognition. When a child shares, or gives, or sees and responds to needs in another, praise him, pick him up and hug him, and point out what he's just done to anyone else who is around.
  "Parenting-by-Objective"
 
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Charity

Dinner Topics for Tuesday

Parenting Value: Charity

Richard and Linda Eyre

Individual and personal caring that goes both beneath and beyond loyalty and respect. Love for friends, neighbors, even adversaries. And a prioritized, lifelong commitment of love for family.

Introduction
Our youngest child is named Charity. We like the sound of the word as well as its definition of "pure love." A few weeks before her first birthday we were trying to generate a discussion of love with our older children around the dinner table. What is love? What causes us to feel it for others? And why are some people so much easier to feel it for than others?

Hard questions, especially for children. No -- maybe especially hard for adults and easier for children. The discussion went beyond what we had hoped. We found ourselves learning instead of teaching. We talked about love meaning caring and about how we love those who love us and do things for us. Then our eleven-year-old daughter brought up the illustration of baby Charity. "She doesn't do things for us, we do everything for her, and just think how much we all love Charity!" 

"Well, she does love us," said the seven year old, "you can tell that by how she looks at you."
"And she never tells you to be different," said our nine-year-old son, "she just seems to like you no matter what." 

What are the messages? 

First we learn to love by being loved unconditionally. 

The principle: We may not always love those who serve us. Their love, depending on how it is given, can spoil us, or intimidate us, or even antagonize us. But unconditional, understanding, fully accepting love warms us without reservation and brings about our reciprocal love. And while we may not necessarily love those who serve us, we will love those whom we serve.
Thus, all of the methods for teaching this value boil down to giving children unconditional love and giving them opportunities to serve. 

General Guidelines
Develop a Service Orientation. You and your children can learn collectively to love through serving. Any kind of service project is a "petri dish" for growing love. Look for charitable services that can be rendered as a family and that can involve your children. These can range from "Sub-for-Santa" charity programs at Christmas time to clean-up, fix-up projects in summer to helping needy people at any time of the year. 

Provide and Allow for Apology and "Repentance." This helps show children that you place love and improvement over punishment and penalty. Too often, well-meaning parents adopt an almost Gestapo-like mentality of "justice" and retribution. "Break a law, get a punishment."
Love is better taught in settings where "repentance" or restitution is an alternative to punishment. 

Teach children that when they make a mistake, or lose their temper, or break a family law, they can often avoid a punishment if they apologize, make restitution, and promise not to "do it again." For smaller children use the "repenting bench" mentioned earlier. When two children fight or argue, sit them on the bench and tell them that the only way to get off the bench is to say what they (not the other guy) did wrong, to apologize (including a hug), and to promise not to do it again. Help them to see that whenever there is a fight or argument, both parties have done something ("it takes two to tangle"). 

Praise them and show pride for any "repenting" they do. The whole process can add to the love that is expressed and felt in your home. 

Clearly Separate Dissatisfaction with Behavior from Love of Child. Assure and reassure your children of your unconditional love for them. At every instance of discipline or corrections reiterate that it is what the child did that you do not like and that your love for the child cannot be altered by anything. Mention this frequently to children of all ages and back it up with a hug and physical affection. Say, "James, I was really upset when you were two hours late getting home from school and didn't call me, and you deserve the penalty you're getting, but I want to remind you that it's what you did that I'm not so wild about. I still love you as much as ever. I always do and always will!"
  "Parenting-by-Objective"
Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Respect

Respect

Richard and Linda Eyre

Respect for life, for property, for parents, for elders, for nature, and for the beliefs and rights of others. Courtesy, politeness, and manners. Self-respect and the avoidance of self-criticism.

Introduction

The importance of and basic necessity for respect are self-evident. Respect is the basis and foundation (and often the motivation) for several of the other basic values of life. Children who learn both to implement and to understand the principle of respect will be better members of society, better friends, and better leaders.

The teaching of respect is an interesting and somewhat difficult proposition. The main thing to remember is that respect isn't given consistently unless it is received. We need first to respect our children (in terms of how we speak to them and how we treat them) and then to absolutely demand that they show respect for us in return. The respect they receive in the home will be the basis for their own self-respect; and the respect they learn to show in the home (to family members) will be the foundation on which to build respect for others outside the home.

General Guidelines

Teach by your own examples. Show respectful behavior. As always, example is the best teacher. During this month be ever-conscious of respect. Let your children see and hear you being concerned for the property and rights of others, assisting the elderly, caring for nature, being polite in all situations and showing self-respect in terms of how you look and how you speak of yourself. 

Extend respect and then expect respect. Create the proper climate for respect in your own home. We often speak to and deal with our children with less respect than we show to strangers. We treat them as though they have no rights an deserve no explanations. We say "because I said so" and we give them no benefit of the doubt and assume they are guilty until proven innocent. 

We need to change this, even if it requires imagining that they are strangers and speaking to them accordingly. Use the words "please" and "thank you" more. Ask them whenever possible instead of telling them. Ask for their advice or input on things. Respect their opinions. 

Once we make this effort, we are in a position to expect (even demand) respect in return. Make it clear that respect includes tone of voice as well as manners. This expectation must be consistent and repetitive. Simply do not allow disrespect in your home. 

Give plenty of praise and recognition. Reinforce respectful behavior and encourage its repetition. Make up your mind to watch for opportunities to praise courtesy and politeness during the month. Catch them doing something right and make a big deal of it. Praise them in front of other family members -- and then try to remember to praise them privately, one on one, later the same day. 

Give them a chance to correct themselves by saying "Let's start over." This is a good method to correct disrespectful behavior in a positive way. Establish the pattern (and the habit, in connection with consistently not allowing disrespect in the home) of saying, "Let's start over." When a disrespectful answer is given, when someone fails to say "please" or "thank you," say "Let's start over." Then repeat the situation, letting the child do it right. Do this with children of all ages. And when necessary, say, "Let's start over" for yourself and then repeat your own statement or behavior in a more respectful way.

"Parenting-by-Objective"

Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.

Parenting Value: Loyalty

Dinner Topics for Tuesday

 

Loyalty & Dependability

By Richard and Linda Eyre

Loyalty to family, to employers, to country, church, schools, and other organizations and institutions to which commit- ments are made. Support, service, contribution. Reliability and consistency in doing what you say you will do.

Introduction

Our two adolescent daughters learned and then put into practice a simple lesson on loyalty one week. They had planned a surprise farewell party in our home for one of their friends who was moving out of the area with her family. On the day of the party three of the girls who had accepted invitations called and, with very flimsy excuses, said they wouldn't be able to come. Our girls, who had decorated and planned for the party for some time, were first disappointed, then a little angry. "They just had something better come up," one daughter complained. "Now we won't have enough people to play some of the games." "It's inconsiderate," said the other daughter. "In fact, it's disloyal and undependable."

Later that week they got invited to a party -- one that they very much wanted to attend. But the party was on the night of the regular meeting and rehearsal of an organization they belonged to, which was preparing for a production. There was no question about where they would have rather gone -- but there also was no question about the loyal and dependable thing to do.

"Parenting-by-Objective"

Review the activities and stories that go along with this months value. Make sure everyone in your family understands the value so they can see how they can apply it in their own lives and situations.

Talk about the Monthly Value every morning and remind your family to look for opportunities to use the value throughout the day. They may also observe how others don't understand the value. Get your children to share their experience with the value each day at the dinner table or before you go to bed. Be sure to share your experience each day as well. It will help your children know that you are thinking about the value too.