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People act in accordance with their notion of identity. There was a study about voting that showed that getting people to identify themselves as a voter resulted in statistically significant increase in them actually voting than asking them if they would vote or having them pledge to vote.
For this reason I take issue with replacing “we don’t talk like that” with “please use kind words”
The former helps form the child’s identity as a person with values, one of which, is not using mean words. The latter is a plea to abide by the parent’s values.
It is not cruel to raise your child to have values and to instill those values. I would argue it is cruel to deprive a child of those core values and replace it with some sort of obedience to authority which is what the updated phrase instills.
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.
It’s not hard so there’s no way you can mess it up
Ima try some of these with my parents. Might help
A lot of ‘parenting guides’ are harmful, but this one is actually good. Saved! (Even though I’m not a parent)
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