Hi Chanzwe318,
We try to lead by example. When our son is helpful, for eg when he was a bubba if he lay still while we changed his nappy, we would thank him and tell him how much we appreciate it when he is helpful. We have never forced teaching him to say please and thank you and yet he uses them. Maybe not as often as other children but at least it genuine and he understands the reasons behind the words rather than just mouthing empty platitudes.
With communication and resolving skills he is still only young so at this point we concentrate on helping him to express and label his feelings, explaining to him why he may be upset or angry and helping him to accept and move forward. For eg, when it's time to get off the trampoline (which is always too early by Sabian's standards) we explain to him that it is time to go and when he gets upset we might say something like "You really enjoy being on the trampoline and you're sad because you don't want to get off. We had fun didn't we? It's time for us to go now, I know it's sad to leave things you're enjoying but we can have another turn tomorrow" and then after acknowledging his feelings and explaining their source to him we then proceed to distract him to help him learn how to get out of yucky moods.
It seems to be working really well, I'm sure we'll know better in another year or two.
We believe empathy comes from understanding your own feelings. being in touch with them and then understanding that others have those feelings too. It is very hard for a young child who still can't label the feelings he is experiencing to understand where they are coming from and that others can have these experiences too. That is why we chose to spend so much time labelling his feelings.
He has displayed a high level of empathy for tv characters (if the tombliboos - In the Night Garden - fall over he gets quite upset and we have to explain to him that they're okay) and on one occassion seeing me cry over some bad news tried to comfort me so we think we're on the right track.
Leadership and pro-activity we encourage through giving him choices to make and accepting his decisions. We try to let him know that he had good ideas and that we enjoy joining in with him on his ideas. We hope this will transfer as he gets older and that he will feel confident in his decision making skills.
We also try not to interfere when he's having difficulty. It's very hard to stand back and watch him struggle but we really try to give him the time to try and get himself out of things and achieve things himself. As he gets older we've noticed that he uses a trial and error method and will try several things before calling for us. We are extremely happy with this and hope we can continue to nurture it as he gets older.
I look forward to hearing what others are doing as it's one of those tricky topics that you don't really know if you're on the right track with until later. It would be good to hear from some more experiences parents.
Digg
