Teaching children to get into someone’s shoes, feelings and situations is key to igniting the quality of empathy. The more we can use teaching moments to point out ways to empathize with others, the less bullying and by-stander silence there will be in our homes, schools and neighborhoods. Helping a child become more sensitive is […]
Conscience can be encouraged early in a child’s life by asking the right questions within teaching moments, and by having children introspect the effects of their behavior on themselves and/or on another person. It sounds like a heavy task, but their are many miraculous teaching moments of questioning, guidance and role modeling that can serve […]
Teaching children how to recognize, label and verbalize what they feel is an enormous gift to children, vital to growth from inside-out. Finding stories, songs and teaching moments helps a child understand what they feel and what another person might be feeling. It can ignite awareness of the universality of feelings, and creates a sensitive, […]
“The No More Bullying Rap Song” on the CD, “Celebrate!” speaks of bullying in relationship to self-belief and self-respect: “The nicer you are to yourself, the less you’ll pick on someone else, and nobody can take away your hopes and your dreams, keep them alive, as hard as it seems. You might have money or you […]
According to a recent New York Times article by Pamela Paul, bullying is rampant in preschool and Kindergarten. I feel that bullying is not a “new” issue. Many years ago, I myself experienced the tortures of bullying as a young child. Gratefully, the media has put a spotlight on this issue, and the wounds of […]
It is important to help children hear, see, feel and know the difference between positive power words and negative power words by having children first build a foundation of awareness and knowledge about the differences in the FEELING SENSE of the words themselves. A meaningful activity is to ask children to come up with positive […]
I love telling stories or writing songs with the “I can do anything” theme, because I feel that this theme is basic for watering the sunflower within everyone and helping each person to grow to their fullness. In-tact self-esteem is hard to come by, yet can be nourished and tended to from the first breath […]
Music can help get a child back on track before it is too late. It can revive self-esteem, self-belief, feelings of inclusion and worthiness. I should know. I was one of those children that was lost, and got back on track because of threshold moments in music. I wasn’t the best student in some subjects, and often […]
Valentine’s Day and every day is our time for teaching children that it is important to be their own best friend, and to know on the deepest of levels that there is no standard “Barbie and Ken” way to look, to talk or to be. The better we feel about ourselves in terms of self-acceptance, self-belief and self-love, the […]
I can still remember what it felt like to be bullied, and I also remember coming home and teasing my sister so that I could regain the power that I had lost at school. I don’t know the exact reasons why I was bullied. I was from a poor family of a minority religion, with […]
