Week 3 of April: Unselfishness and Sensitivity
In Connection with Richard and Linda Eyre

Editor's Note:  This month the Meridian Family Value of the month is UNSELFISHNESS AND SENSITIVITY.  Click here to read this month's overview article). Each week during the month we will post an update in Meridian, illustrating a couple of the Eyres' favorite methods for teaching the powerful value of LOVE to each age group.  Remember that you can also go to http://www.valuesparenting.com/ for still more ideas and teaching methods.  Thanks for your interest and participation.  There are tens of thousands of parents concentrating on this value this month.  It is a way of saving this disrespectful society of ours ― one family at a time!  Send us your feedback, and if you want a free children's CD on the value of Honesty, see the instructions at the bottom of this article.

Methods for Teaching Unselfishness and Sensitivity to Pre-School Children (second weekly installment on methods)

The “Put Yourself in the Picture” Game

This game lets children practice at empathizing with someone they have never met or spoken to. Watch for pictures in magazines that show people in situations that are unusual to you and your children. These could range from a man on a horse in the mountains to a girl in a magazine clothing ad. Almost any magazine has several pictures or advertisements that will work for this exercise.

The game consists of looking at the picture and attempting to describe how the person in the picture feels. This can start on a physical level as you try to imagine what he sees and hears, whether she is cold or warm, and so forth. Then try to go beyond the physical and speculate how he or she might feel emotionally. Have a discussion about it. Let each person imagine how the subject feels and express his or her own observations.

A variation of the game is to give each player a different picture to study, then have them give a short speech or write a brief theme on what the subject feels.

“How Do You Feel?”

This can help small children be more aware of their own feelings as well as those of others. Use the world feel more often, Say, “How do you feel about…” or “I feel…” Encourage children to use the word frequently. Discuss feelings whenever the opportunity arises. 

Methods for Elementary School Age

The Nose Watching Game

This game will further increase children’s awareness of other people. While on a trip or outing together — or even while shopping or running errands — see how many different kinds of noses you can observe. Later discuss the most interesting noses you noticed and how no two are alike.

The Looking-and-Listening-for-Needs Game

This can help children begin focusing the seeing and listening skills on opportunities for service. Tell the children that this game is an extension of the nose-watching game. Only this time we’ll be looking not at people’s noses but at their needs. Explain that needs are a lot harder to see than noses. To see needs, you have to look hard and listen hard. Someone might be feeling just a little discouraged and need some encouragement, or a little insecure and need a compliment. Or someone might feel left out and need a friend, or useless and need to be asked to help. or there might be more obvious needs like a hungry child or a lonely older person.

Select a day for the game, a day when you can be together for dinner in the evening. During the day keep track of how many needs you can notice and identify. Take notes. At dinner that night give reports on those notes and discuss and compare them.

The Secret-Buddies Game

This game helps children shift their attention to another family member and experience the satisfaction of doing things for that person anonymously.  Put each family member’s name (including parents’) in a hat and let each person draw a name secretly. Spend the week ahead playing “secret buddies,” during which each person tries to find little things he or she can do for his buddy anonymously (from carefully anonymous notes, compliments, and gifts, to fixing or cleaning secretly). At the end of the week give a prize for “best deeds” and another for “best secrecy.”

Methods for Adolescents

Three Daily Priorities – the Three S’s

This can help adolescents become effective goal setters and ensure that they think of extra-centered as well as self-centered possibilities or goals. Help children get into the habit of spending five minutes each morning setting up three simple goals for the day ahead:

1. The most important thing they can do that day for school (a particularly important test, assignment, etc.)
2. The single most important thing they can do for themselves that day (eat well, exercise, get enough rest, etc.)
3. One key thing that they can do for someone else that day (help a little brother or sister with something, be nice to an unpopular person at school, pay a particular person a compliment, etc.)

The idea is to get children to stop to think about three priorities for a few moments each day (school, self and service). Just asking the three questions will help an adolescent get his mind above his own worries and insecurities. And doing one important thing each day in each area will give you, the parent, a great many opportunities for praise and encouragement.

The Listen-and-Paraphrase-and-Add-Feeling Game

This game will help improve children’s listening and interpretation skills. Explain to adolescents that the listening ability your family worked on earlier is just the start for being able to understand other people’s feelings. You have to listen, understand, and then try hard to put yourself into the other person’s shoes and imagine what he feels.

Then introduce the following listening game: One family member asks another what happened to him that day. The second person tells some experience, and the first person repeats back or paraphrases the experience, visualizing it as though it had happened to him. He then indicates how he thinks the other person felt.

For example, twelve-year-old James says to ten-year-old Pat, “What happened today?” Pat says, “Oh, we had a math test and I thought it would be easy, but the teacher asked a lot of questions form the chapter I didn’t study and hardly any from the chapter I did!”

James responds, “So you thought you were prepared for the test, because you did study, but you mostly studied one chapter, and when you took the test, most of it was on another chapter — one that you hadn’t studied. I’ll bet you felt kind of frustrated, and maybe you felt a little bit mad at your teacher for tricking you or for not telling you what chapter to study.”

It’s surprising how much children enjoy this kind of discussion (once they get the hang of it) with their siblings or with their parents.

And there is no better training for the development of real concern.

See you next week for more methods.

Closing Note: Many have asked if there are actual teaching tools to assist parents in teaching the Meridian family value of the month to their children. The Eyres have been involved with a series of values-teaching CDs called Alexander's Amazing Adventures, which give 5-14 year old children a vicarious (and dramatic) experience with each month's value. By special arrangement, Meridian readers who have been following this column and participating in the value of the month can now receive, as a free gift, the HONESTY CD from this series.  Simply send a self-addressed, stamped 5 X 7 or 8 X 10 envelope (the padded ones are best) to the Eyres at 1098 Augusta Way, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108 and they will send you the gift CD.  (You will need to put $0.87 [87cents] in stamps or postage on your return envelope.) Please respond only if you have been reading and following the column, and please do not ask for more than one copy of the CD.  We hope this gift will help make the value-of-the-month concept even more effective within your family.

Linda and Richard Eyre, parents of nine children and authors (together and individually) of more than thirty books, are now focusing on reaching families and individuals online. Through their web sites www.valuesparenting.com, http://www.theeyres.com/, and http://www.familynightlessons.com/, their frequent media appearances on shows such as Oprah, The CBS Early Show, The Today Show, and BYU Television, and their world-wide lecture tours, they continue to work at their mission statement – "FORTIFY FAMILIES, popularize parenting, validate values, and bolster balance."

Linda is a teacher and musician and founder of "Joy Schools." She was named by the National Council of Women as one of America's six outstanding young women. Richard, a former mission president in London and candidate for Utah governor, was the director of the White House Conference on Parents and Children for President Reagan. Both of the Eyres have served on numerous civic, arts, university, and humanitarian boards and head a foundation that focuses on the needs of third world children.

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