The Value of Unselfishness
and Sensitivity
(And How to Get Involved with Joy School this Fall with Your Preschooler)
In connection with Richard and Linda Eyre
Meridian is pleased
to have a partnership with Richard and Linda Eyre on this value
of the month concept. As many readers know, the
Eyres are the authors of the New York Times #1 bestseller
Teaching Your Children Values, and they will write our Meridian
Value update articles at the first of each month. If you are new
to the Family Value program, click here.
Unselfishness and Sensitivity
The
value for April, Unselfishness and Sensitivity, is a particularly
important principle because it has so much to do with maturity
and with the key skill of treating other people well. We define
this value as: Becoming more extra-centered and less self-centered.
Learning to feel with and for others. Empathy, tolerance, brotherhood.
Sensitivity to needs in people and situations.
We suggest that you take a few minutes
and formulate a basic, simple plan of how you can focus in on
this value with your children during the month ahead. The way
to do this is to click
here and go to the four archive articles on methods for teaching
unselfishness and sensitivity to preschoolers, elementary age
kids, and adolescents.
As you browse those articles, cut
and paste the methods you like best (and that you think would
work best with your kids) into a document on your computer. Then
print it out, and keep it around the house during the month to
remind you to implement the ideas with your kids.
Just to get you warmed up, let us
give you a sample of one of our favorite ideas for elementary
and adolescent children. And then, for those of you with preschoolers,
let us share the concept of joy schools — the best way we
have ever found to help preschool children learn unselfishness
and sensitivity.
A couple of favorite methods
for elementary age:
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.”
The Adjective Game
This game assists children in defining
their feelings and increases their ability to verbalize those
feelings. As a family, make a long list of adjectives that describe
how people can feel. Start with the most basic feelings, such
as “happy,” “sad,” “mad,”
“frustrated,” “embarrassed,” and move
to more specific and interesting adjectives, such as “murky,”
“jumpy,” “agitated,” “perplexed,”
“elated.”
Try to list at least one hundred
words before you are finished. Explain that a good vocabulary
helps us figure out our feelings as well as express them.
Hang the list in a visible place
and invite family members to add to it whenever they think of
another good descriptive adjective or whenever they feel emotion
that is not described by any word on the list.
A couple of favorite methods
for young adolescents:
The Mirror-Window Lesson
This can help younger adolescents
conceptualize and appreciate the difference between self-centeredness
and extra-centeredness. Try to get a piece of one-way glass (mirror
from one side, window from the other). If you can’t find
one, a plain piece of glass will do. Point out that when it is
dark behind the glass, it is a mirror ? all you see in it is yourself.
When it is light behind it, you see through it
? you see other people and not your own reflection.
Point out to your children that life
is much the same. When our minds are dark and self-centered, we
only see ourselves (“What’s best for me?” “How
will this affect me?” “What can this person do for
me?”) In this mode we are always unhappy and self-conscious.
But when we light up and look at other people ? trying to listen,
trying t o see their needs, and so one ? we “lose ourselves”
and quit worrying about ourselves and feeling self-conscious.
The Listen-and-Paraphrase-and-Add-Feeling
Game
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.
And now our favorite method for
preschoolers — Joy School
Joy School
Did you know that there was a do-it-yourself preschool, costing
less than a tenth of what most preschools cost, where moms rotate
as teacher and where three and four year olds, instead of being
crammed with early academics, get truly prepared for kindergarten
by learning the social and emotional skills we call joy?
It's called Joy School, and it has been around for more than 20
years, and been used by hundreds of thousands of preschoolers
and their moms.
It is far and away the best and most
complete way we have ever found to help small children to be unselfish
and sensitive, and to help them learn all the joys that will make
their lives happier and prepare them socially and emotionally
for kindergarten.
The lesson plans for Joy School are
so complete and so easy that any mom can present them to kids
with confidence and competence. And they are all on line so that
they can be downloaded, complete with the music, art projects,
games and stories that make them so effective and so fun.
If you have a preschooler and want
to look into Joy School for the fall, just go to www.joyschools.com.
It will not only help you teach your preschool child the value
of unselfishness and sensitivity, but it will also prepare him
or her for all of the other values as well, because, as you will
see, the 12 "joys" of the Joy School curriculum are
actually just the 12 values of this column and of the book Teaching
Your Children Values — but they are reduced to the
preschool level and portrayed as joys to feel instead of as values
to live.
Joy Schools are well-established
(more than 100,000 parents have been teaching) and truly unique
preschools. The central belief of Joy School is simply that children,
while in their most impressionable years, should be taught life's
most important thing — various capacities for joy. A related
belief is that children suffer not from being started in academic
learning too late, but in starting too soon, before they have
a basis of social and emotional self-esteem.
Do-it-yourself Joy Schools involve from 3 to 6 mothers who rotate
as teacher, holding Joy School in their homes twice a week by
using the detailed lesson plans from this site. These lesson plans
include all the music, stories, games, and activities to learn
and teach one kind of Joy each month. Get all the details and
learn how to sign up at www.joyschools.com.
The Joy School curriculum is built around joy — with the
philosophy that happy children become strong students and well
adjusted adults. For three- and four-year-olds, "J.Q."
(Joy Quotient) is more important than I.Q. (Time after time we
are told by kindergarten and first grade teachers that Joy School
graduates do better in school than kids coming out of pushy, early-academics
preschools.)
So, have a great month and enjoy
your focus on the value (and the joy) of unselfishness and sensitivity!
