Teaching Children Life Skills

When I go about my mindless tasks the wheels in my head start turning. Thus is the case today. I don't know why for sure, but as these thoughts ran through my mind it occurred to be that I should share these ideas with others. So here you go. I hope you find this beneficial.

I don't recall how the process started but it can to the idea that we all have a child within each of us telling us how to feel about the things we observe in our lives. You know like when we see a group of other adults laughing and think perhaps they are laughing at you. Or like the thoughts that I sometimes have about work schedules. Sometimes I have no hours and my child says, "look they don't like you so they are trying to get rid of you." Interestingly enough the child says the same about when they schedule me many hours. You can't win for loosing. The responsible adult in me reassures that child that no one cares enough to put that much emotion into the scheduling and the child realizes that I am right.

As these thoughts were swirling in my head I realized that one of the most important parts of life is identifying when our child speaks and when we are being rational adults. That part is difficult, but what about when you are the child? When a child comes to you and says, "mom, she/he was being mean to me." What do we do? Do you immediately buy in to that feeling? Do we brush the child's concerns off? Or do we teach our children how to deal with those feelings and how to question those emotions?

Ideally I think we should do the last. In my college courses we were taught to observe children and record the actions of the children without attaching a value to the action. IE: Instead of Johnny was being naughty and hit someone, you would say, Johnny hit a child on the back. It's interesting when we do this exercise how much more reality we see. Would it not be wise then to teach this aspect to our child when they use the phrase, "She was being mean?" Why not ask, "What did thy do?" "Are you sure they were being mean?" "Did you ask them if they were trying to be mean?" "Did you tell them you didn't like that because you thought it was mean?"

As I thought through this process of teaching my children how to process this information in a more empowering way I realized that when the time comes I may forget to use these methods (since Braxton hasn't attained this level of communicating with me). My thought is that perhaps I can share these ideas with my friends and therefore you in turn will remind me when I am at that place. I just think that empowering children with valuable lessons and life skills is SO important in this day and age!