Cultivating a Culture of Kindness
As we all know, relationships take work.
It’s no different for sibling relationships. Just because they are born into the same family, doesn’t mean they will instantly be besties for life.
We, as parents, have the ability to facilitate and cultivate a culture of kindness and affirmation in our households, in the early days.
We all need a bit of help in this department!
Here’s a little plan you could try for cultivating encouragement and kindness amongst your kids. Cos if they don’t have each others’ backs, who will?!
THE PLAN -
Read the book ‘Have you Filled a Bucket Today’ by Carol McCloud- this book is lovely. It helps young children (aimed at preschool aged and up) understand the impact of their words and actions by giving everyone an invisible bucket that can be either filled or emptied.
Make a poster together about all the things each of you could do to fill people’s buckets in your family. (This could also be a good time to chat about things that we say/do that empties people’s ‘buckets’
Get everyone on board for...
THE MARBLE JAR (or some kind of variation of this)
FOR THE MARBLE JAR YOU WILL NEED -
Glass jar (not too large)
Bag/s of marbles (easily found at most discount stores)
Some sort of incentive ( I would encourage you to come up with this as a family) - it may be material/physical, or some kind of experience TOGETHER - the win in this is for the whole family.
HOW IT WORKS -
An empty glass jar is placed on the bench, visible to all - everyone talks about what will happen when the jar is filled with marbles eg the family get to go to the beach/McDonalds/whatever (something really desirable)
Show everyone the marbles (in another jar or container).
When a parent hears a child affirming or encouraging a sibling, a marble is placed in the jar (acknowledgement is key). Equally, if a child hears their parents encouraging one another or another child, a marble can go in too (yes, this could be GREAT for your marriage!!)
The family work together to FILL the jar with marbles.
This was a behavioural reinforcement technique used in my teaching days, when when the entire class needed to work together as a team and it yielded wonderful results.
The jar of marbles then stands as a symbol of all the positive words and actions flying around your house!
If you feel like you need some more support in positive communication, https://raisingchildren.net.au/toddlers/connecting-communicating/connecting/praise has some great suggestions too.
When the jar is FULL… Ta dah! The family has a win and gets to celebrate together!
Photo by Gary Gay
By participating in this whole process, new habits are formed and a new culture is established - where hopefully, the go-to comments are encouraging and uplifting rather than negative and destructive.
Sick of the fighting and put downs? Why not try it! It could just be the win you didn’t know you were looking for!
*Note: Most helpful for preschool age and up.