kindness

Picking Away at Happiness

Such is the nature of kids: if there is a little hole in something, they pick away at it and the hole grows bigger by the day.

I had a tiny hole in the fabric on my living room sofa. It was on the arm of the couch where someone had snagged their jewelry perhaps, and made an eensy tear in the fabric. It was when my house was busy with my 7 kids, and although I reminded them not to put their finger in it until I could repair it, it got bigger day by day. Soon a little wisp of stuffing was coming out and day-by-day that hole increased unbeknownst to me until I suddenly noticed that the couch arm looked deflated. The little ones had found it just right for their finger to poke in and pull out a bit of stuffing. Day-by-day, it had eroded.

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Filed Under: Nurturing, Why Tagged With: criticism, kindness, marriage

Paper Clip Social Skills

by Diane Hopkins

Manners! It seems like a constant challenge to try to inculcate excellent social skills into our young’uns. My favorite way to teach good manners has been using the book The 21 Rules of This House. My children can recite every rule and explain it perfectly, and still we need work at being courteous and selfless. After going through the 21 rules, we came back to some of them to practice more. It was easy for the children to understand that it is wrong to tell a lie or to hurt someone. But it was harder to follow this rule: “We speak quietly and respectfully one with another.” We had discussed at length what it means to follow this rule, and how it includes not interrupting others or criticizing or gossiping about others. But to know is one thing, and to do is quite another!