Spring is here, which means there’s more time for your kids to be playing outside and on the playground. Whether that playground is at a school, a park or someone’s backyard, it offers a perfect environment for almost limitless hours of fun and imaginative play. Like all play opportunities for children, however, playground play comes with some risk factors. When they’re chasing one another around the swing set or climbing up ladders, kids can get injured.
“Be nice to your sister.”
“Use kind words.”
“What you did wasn’t very considerate.”
As parents, we’re always preaching to our children about kindness and being nice, but it’s usually an after-affect of some not-so-kind words or impulsive acts they haven’t thought through. We parents exhort kindness once it’s too late, usually only after our kids have been unkind.
For our children to really master kindness it needs to be taught on its own, an island by itself, and not a reaction to sass or bitterness.
Psychiatrist, ADHD Specialist, & Author
