Frank says I’m too hard on our six year old sometimes. I don’t think my expectations are too high or too hard but I do think I could use a more positive approach sometimes. "Don’t do that!" and "that’s not very good manners" are certainly not teaching how to behave but rather how not to behave. I got a great lesson directly from our six year old last night.
We were playing Uno and I was holding the baby. The baby of course was trying to get the cards into his mouth. I said, "you’d better not slobber on the cards or your big brother will be upset with you." To which our six year old immediately jumped in with a very concerned look on his face, "No, no, no …. I wouldn’t be!" Now those Uno cards are his prized possesion and yet he wouldn’t be mad at his little brother for slobbering on them!
Now you might say the six year old wasn’t really teaching his baby brother anything. But he was saying it was ok to mess up and he was showing a great teaching style. If our six year old stepped on one of my books and bent the cover I’m sure I would sound upset! So I can learn from him …
Teaching Lessons
I convinced Mom that Miss Dom was just too outdated in her methods of te