I recently read a “light bulb” article — What To Say To Little Kids Instead Of “Say Sorry. A “light bulb” article for me is when the article plops a revelation in your lap — and this was an important one. Read an except here, you’ll see what I mean:
“When touring different preschools for my daughter, I visited one where I got to observe the kids playing on the playground. While climbing the ladder on the slide, a little boy accidentally stepped on a little girl’s finger, and she started crying. What happened next left me astounded.
The boy, who was 3, went up to the girl, looked her in the eye and asked, “Are you okay? Can I get you a wet towel?”
She wiped her tears, shook her head no, and they both went back to playing.
I looked at the preschool director, like, uh, what was that?
“We don’t make kids say ‘sorry,’” she explained. “The word doesn’t mean much without an action to help make things better.”
The author suggests, “Instead, parents can help kids develop moral compassion by explaining that their actions have consequences, showing that they can do something to make things better and modeling ways to use the word ‘sorry’ meaningfully.”
Teaching children empathy is essential and essential to being empathetic is being able to understand, name, and identify feelings. Some ideas on this are in a piece I wrote last month – Emotional Vocabulary.
whatsaboymom 