It’s nice to see your children displaying those traits that you have been nurturing. You know the ones like being polite, respecting others, listening, being considerate etc. There are so many of them. One of those traits we want our children to have is to be thoughtful. We want them to share their possessions selflessly, think of others and give without needing to receive. We want them to see a situation and think to themselves could I do anything to help or notice things that many of use don’t such as a child standing on their own in a playground and going over to them s=to check that they are okay or if they want to play.
So how can we encourage children to be like this and not resent what we expect of them? Well we can do a multitude of things…
Teaching Children To Be Thoughtful Children
We can model the behaviour we want to see in our children ourselves by saying and behaving in a thoughtful way.
We can provide them with opportunities to serve others such as getting them to do something for the community and let them experience how good it feels to do something for someone else.
We can give them the responsibility of looking after a pet. This will allow them to think of others as well as themselves and it will help them be more responsibility.
We can suggest that they use birthdays as an opportunity to donate old toys or unwanted gifts to charity so they see that not everyone is as fortunate as them.
We can give our children chores so that they can see that families have to work as part of a team and that everyone will benefit from the work they do rather than just them.
What methods have you used so your child thinks of others?
For more information on helping your child with the traits you want them to have buy my book, The Parent’s Toolkit. There are many ideas on manners, traits and behaviour.
Image courtesy of artur84 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
