{I was holding Brandon's arms for him to stand in front of me and Steve took this picture just as he was falling over, which is something he doesn't normally do.}
OK, so first for the song we sang "I want to be kind to everyone". Then to start the lesson, I explained what it meant to be polite, and told them about the Golden Rule. I so wish I could have remembered the My Turn on Earth song about the golden rule, but I couldn't. Then Steve and I did some role-playing. We did three different scenario's and then had the boys explain to us what was wrong with each.
First I started asking Steven a question and Steve kept interrupting me. Steven was having a hard time listening to both of us.
Second I asked Steve a couple of questions and he just ignored me. A problem we have with Steven sometimes when an adult is asking him a question.
Third Steve started Screaming at everybody to sit down, and be quiet, and listen, and stop talking. We asked the boys how the screaming made them feel.
We definitely have a problem with screaming at our house, and I will attribute some of that to the fact that we live in a house with 3 floors which is very typical in Germany. I also tend to scream 10 times about something before I spank, so I yell a lot. Anyway....we have made a family goal that we are not going to scream at all from now until Saturday when we leave for Virginia. We have a jar of money on top of the microwave, and whenever somebody screams we take money out of the jar. The money is going to be used to buy something fun for the airplane, so the more money that is taken out the smaller the fun thing is going to be. Nathan had 4 coins taken out of the jar before he went to bed an hour after the lesson.
After our role-playing was done we let the boys act out some role-playing scenarios like..... taking a toy when someone else is playing with it, going over to play when Dad has asked you to put your shoes on, or stepping right in someones way when they are trying to go somewhere. And there are a million more that the boys should be taught. We had fun, but it could have been better executed. But like I said, it didn't seem to work anyway since the boys were all a problem today, so I guess I have a chance to try again. :-) If any one has a good lesson for children on how to be respectful to adults, or how to be more polite I would LOVE your ideas, so send them my way.
3 comments:
Some observations:
1. I am almost certain that you didn't have this lesson when your sisters visited.
2. Will there be enough in the airplane jar to buy duct tape?
3. I think I taught you the benefits of screaming. How did I do?
4. Tell Steve that it is not nice to interrupt, ignore or scream.
5. My idea on how to teach kids to be respectful is, "Go to your room and don't come out until you can act like a human being."
I love that you are taking money out of the jar, it is a great visual negative. Much better than putting money in, I think. I love being with your boys, I don't think that they are impolite. I just think that there are 3 of them, so it always seems like someone is being impolite. I think that screaming comes with frustration. As my life has settled down, I don't scream. I say just keep working on it. It is a great goal.
"And did you know, though it doesn't show, There's a Golden Rule inside of you. It says, "Do unto others as you would have others do to you."
Oh, I wish you could hear me singing it. It really is one of my favorites to belt out.
I love the lesson idea. We are having a problem with not responding to adults too. That's a tough one because they are not supposed to talk to strangers, but they are supposed to be polite when an adult is talking to them. Let me know if you figure something out.
Post a Comment