6 Ways to Avoid Punishing Children for Being Human
At Camp Kupugani, our premier Midwest summer camp (near Chicago), we treat our minor campers with the same respect we treat our adult co-workers, friends, or family. A recent article by the folks at Creative Child brought to light that children are sometimes “Punished for Being Human.” As part of intentional empowerment process, we do not solve problems for our campers; we support them to handle situations at their maturity level.
A well-intentioned parental mistake is for one to tell a child, “Stop crying, you are fine!” This can apply to a hurt limb or hurt feeling. How we might handle such a situation at camp for example, regarding homesickness, is…instead of telling a child, “stop crying, you are fine,” we instead help them process what might be making them feel homesick. This facilitates coping with feelings in a healthy way, feeling heard, and giving actions and value to the feelings, which in turns helps a child cope in a developmentally positive and healthy manner.
For bullets on how to treat our kiddos with positivity and respect, check out below. The whole article is available here.
- Children need to learn about emotions
- Focus on all emotions
- Express that all emotions are okay to feel
- Children may not know how to process certain emotions
- Give examples of how to handle certain emotions
- Practice make perfect!
- Talk with your kids to get to the bottom of behavior
- Behavior rarely just happens
- All behaviors constitute learning opportunities
- Children learn from what they see
- Children learn how to handle emotions by watching
- Give your child a positive example to follow
- Control your own emotions when your child is emotional
- Don’t try and rush the conversation
- Allow yourself and your child to calm down
- Time can make big problems seem smaller
- Give your child time
- Do not push them to change overnight
- Support any growth you notice even if it seems “small”
- Do your own emotional inventory
- How do you speak with people who work in the service industry?
- How do you act when you do not get something you desire?
- Do you raise your voice to make your point known?
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Source: Creative Child