When you’re a child, the world revolves around you. Or so it seems.
We have guests in from out of town and this morning we told the boys we were going to show our friends the sights around our community. They whined and complained. “No! I want to stay home. Can we play Wii instead?”
“First of all,” I told them, “our friends are here visiting and we show respect by sharing things we like with them and doing activities they might enjoy. Second, even if we weren’t going to show our friends around, you wouldn’t be playing with the Wii on a beautiful day anyway”
They were not happy.
Some parents would try to accommodate their child’s whiny cries and go so far as changing their plans. Not me. I found it an opportunity to teach them and tried to put up with the complaints. In the end, they enjoyed our adventures and were glad we went.
Hosting guests can be a challenge for kids, especially when the guests come without their own kids or don’t speak English. The children wish they had guests too and they probably feel out of the loop. Again, another lesson comes to mind. Teaching them about patience. For now, I’ll work on teaching respect…that seems like a big hurdle to mount on its own.
So on my quest to understand how to teach a child respect – and whether this task is more or less of a challenge for boys or girls, I found an interesting and helpful website: RudeBusters. Check it out.
In the end, the kids are not at fault. They aren’t wrong to whine, afterall in their mind – they think the world revolves around them. They might even be a little jealous that the parents are sharing their time with someone else, but you can use the opportunity to teach your child about respecting others.
