Children, particularly toddlers and younger ones, don’t have an abundance of higher reasoning and logic. They are figuring out what “self” even is. being gentle with developing minds shouldn’t take away values.
To your point, I can see middle school kids benefitting from a more avtive voice approach.
I think even a young child could understand “we don’t talk like that” I don’t really see the alternative as particularly more gentle.
If a young child is figuring out what “self” is, I think it would be even better to provide them guidance that could help them answer that question. “Please use kind language” is just a request / order, I imagine someone might think it’s more gentle because it contains the word “please” but I’m not really sure
I think either phrase could be delivered in a gentle or aggressive manner. I would support telling a child “we speak kindly to others” as a sort of middle ground. Even better would be to explain the importance of this value to them “we speak kindly to others. It’s important that we treat each other with kindness” and then to follow up any questions about why, to provide space for the child to understand the value you want to communicate instead of just the instruction.
I do think raising up a child with kindness is good, but our children will not always have an adult nearby to tell them to be nice. Our goal should be to give them the values that guide their conduct in our absence and help them navigate the world.
Children, particularly toddlers and younger ones, don’t have an abundance of higher reasoning and logic. They are figuring out what “self” even is. being gentle with developing minds shouldn’t take away values.
To your point, I can see middle school kids benefitting from a more avtive voice approach.
I think even a young child could understand “we don’t talk like that” I don’t really see the alternative as particularly more gentle.
If a young child is figuring out what “self” is, I think it would be even better to provide them guidance that could help them answer that question. “Please use kind language” is just a request / order, I imagine someone might think it’s more gentle because it contains the word “please” but I’m not really sure
I think either phrase could be delivered in a gentle or aggressive manner. I would support telling a child “we speak kindly to others” as a sort of middle ground. Even better would be to explain the importance of this value to them “we speak kindly to others. It’s important that we treat each other with kindness” and then to follow up any questions about why, to provide space for the child to understand the value you want to communicate instead of just the instruction.
I do think raising up a child with kindness is good, but our children will not always have an adult nearby to tell them to be nice. Our goal should be to give them the values that guide their conduct in our absence and help them navigate the world.