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Kindness Rules!

I'm going to just put this out there... 4 year olds are hard! At least mine is. He is very difficult, about 50% of the time. He is so emotional and angry, anything will set him off. He doesn't want to hug me with sweatshirts on, he doesn't want his food warm, but wait now he does, and now he wants it cold again. He also doesn't like to be wrong, or feel like he can't do something. It is a storm of emotions and feelings around here. I would like to formally offer an apology to my daughter at this time, but also remind her that she herself was a stinker around this age as well. With all this rage and insecurity also comes love and sweetness that is like no other. He can be the nicest most caring boy around. It is up to us as a family to show him how to equalize all these feelings. He needs to know how to be angry and upset just as much as he needs to know how to show kindness, compassion, and love. So for now we lead by example and give him as much patience and love as we can.


I am also trying to figure out a way to use the Mother Goose and her Giving Goslings that come in our Mother Goose Time curriculum. When you get your first box of Mother Goose Time you get a getting started package that comes with everything you need to create a wall display and circle time area. One of the items you get is a Mother Goose and a nest. Then every month you get a new gosling that helps teach values that support caring and kindness. You also get a feather with the months value on it. To be honest, I don't think these items are utilized as well as they could be. So it is up to me as the teacher to use the materials provided to make them relevant for us. I have kept the goslings and on the day that they are used we talk about them, but after that they just kind of sit in the nest forgotten until the next months gosling is talked about. So far we have received a loving, sharing, thankful, and this months gentle gosling.


 I really liked the idea of them so I started thinking about how I could use them to help teach my son the importance of living these values and becoming a kind person. How could I use this to help him think about his actions? Think about others actions? I decided that they needed to be talked about on a daily basis. During our morning meeting we are going to start reviewing these values. I am going to start by asking what kind of a day are we going to try to have today? How are we going to try to act to each other? I am also going to point out these values as we see them in action. I will point out that I noticed he was angry but was still gentle. I will point out when he and his sister are sharing well. Even point out when we see other kids or adults sharing when we are out. I am also going to try to talk about the feelings surrounding these actions. Hopefully he can start recognizing how acting in certain ways makes him feel. Also how acting in different ways might make others feel. I am hoping that by making this part of our daily routine that it will help reinforce the importance of this and also give him the tools he needs to act in this way and be in a little more control of his emotions.

I also have decided that we are going to use the feathers in a more meaningful way. I wasn't sure what to do with them so I gave them to each of the kids when we talked about them, but they have been lost and thrown away. I decided to use one of the metal rings that I had extra of and I put this months feather on there. We are going to keep them on the mailbox for now, as the collection gets larger I might move it. I think we might use them as a end of the night conversation starter. Maybe we can look through the feathers and talk about how we lived the values, or discuss seeing someone else doing something that lived up to the values.



I am hoping that the goslings and feathers will be a great new addition to our routine and will help both the kids to think about kindness first. Also I am hoping that it will help my husband and I to have some more positive ways to deal with the difficult behavior.


*Mother Goose Time has generously provided our curriculum to us in exchange for our stories and honest opinions*

   

Comments

  1. steph_gemJanuary 20, 2017 at 5:48 PM

    This is wonderful. I'm starting seeing this stage of emotion in Aiden. Every reaction is so dramatic sometimes I want to laugh other times I want to pull my hair out. Those moments of sweetness though are the amazing.

    ReplyDelete

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