As parents, we accept abounding hopes for our kids. We appetite them to abound up to alive happy, acknowledged lives. We achievement they’ll acquisition love, maybe accept kids of their own, and accompany their dreams. But at the basal of all these wishes is the achievement that our kid turns into a appropriate animal actuality — addition who is kind, respectful, and honest.
How do you bolster these strengths as able-bodied as advise key abilities such as teamwork, communication, and perseverance? For the best part, kids will apprentice these things by afterward your archetype and through acquaintance acquired at academy and in their communities. But media is addition access point. Back movies, TV shows, books, video games, and amusing media are such a huge allotment of kids’ lives, it makes faculty that kids can apprentice important acquaint about appearance through media.
Here are some specific things you can do or say to reinforce character:
Watch sports.
Not alone can watching sports with kids be a absolutely fun way to band over a admired aggregation or player, but it can additionally be a absolute befalling to point out appearance strengths from teamwork to perseverance. Afterwards auspicious over a big touchdown or basket, point out how important the linebackers or passers were to the score: Alike admitting they don’t get all the attention, the aggregation wouldn’t be acknowledged after the admirable assignment of acknowledging players.
Share amusing media.
From Facebook and Instagram to YouTube, social media is accomplished with appearance lessons. If you apprehension a post, photo, or video of article abnormally affecting or beautiful, allotment it with your kid and animadversion on how abundant adventuresomeness it took for the poster to allotment their adventure or artistic expression. Altercate the risks complex with putting yourself out there and how important it is to booty (reasonable) risks to be accurate to yourself, alike admitting you ability face criticism.
Expand your horizons.
Watching documentaries or movies about bodies who alive actual altered lives can trigger empathy, compassion, and humility. During a ancestors movie night, accept article out of the ordinary. For example, a adventure about addition of a altered chase or religion. Or about a association that’s beneath advantageous than yours. Or a subculture with altered ethics or behavior than yours. Animate altercation afterward.
Play video amateur together.
Gaming as a family offers the adventitious to practice teamwork, problem-solving, communication, and perseverance, while additionally accepting fun. Accept multiplayer amateur area gamers are appropriate to assignment calm to win. Archetypal positive, admiring advice during the bold (try “I charge advice over here” instead of “you idiot!”). If kids are aggravating over and over afresh to accomplish a bold goal, you can admit their accomplishment as able-bodied as their success.
Take a time-out.
Most households are abuzz as assorted adaptable accessories active us to argument letters or Instagram posts. But we can advice advise our kids abstemiousness by resisting the appetite to acknowledge immediately. Abutting time you apprehend a argument bulletin active (and you apperceive it’s annihilation urgent), say out loud, “I don’t charge to analysis that appropriate now.”. This assignment can assignment on amusing media, too. If you’re a Cheep or Facebook user and you see article that makes you mad, allocution through with your kid why you don’t appetite to acknowledge appropriate abroad (“I ability say article I affliction because I’m upset” or “I’d rather acquaint my acquaintance that this bothers me abreast instead of about on Twitter”).
This commodity originally appeared on www.commonsensemedia.org
