My wife and I have gone to great lengths to guide our daughter into becoming a respectful and honest girl. We knew full well before having a child that we needed to have the traits we wanted her to gain as a part of us first. Children will do what you do and say what you say. We are her role models and we take that very seriously.
I am proud to report that we do have an excellent 7 year old daughter. She is very respectful, doesn’t talk back, and follows the instructions we give her. Sometimes she stalls a bit but we’ll take that as she doesn’t even fuss about cleaning up her room.
We are also quite strict about her education. If something on a computer is beneficial, then it has its place as tool for its educational value. One such tool is Disney’s ToonTown. Since it requires a child to read, it sped up her beginning reading skills very quickly. It didn’t take long before she was reading well past her grade level.
However, she really got fixated on the game to the point where it started hurting her development in 1st grade arithmetic. So we uninstalled the ToonTown game until she mastered the arithmetic for 1st grade.
Our exact statements were “You will not be able to play the ToonTown game until you master your addition and subtraction facts.”
She has completely honored our directions and is working hard at learning her basic math skills. However, she is also very good on the Internet even at the age of 7. Additionally, she is very good at following our instructions to the exact letter of each word. So one time when she was using the computer, I heard a familiar sound of ToonTown. Investigating, I found she was still following our instructions exactly as she wasn’t playing ToonTown but watching it on YouTube.
She wasn’t violating our instructions so we couldn’t say anything. Part of the honesty lessons and saying what you mean is sticking by what you said. So we can’t change the rules on her as that would be a violation of her trust.
The main lesson in all of this is the following: Watch your words very closely as the children are listening.
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