Friday, June 12, 2015

Letter of Encouragement #1

My 5 year old son is seeing a behavioral therapist as per the indirect recommendation of his teacher (she recommended I speak with his pediatrician, who referred me to a child psychologist, who recommended the therapist). I will get into that in depth in another post at some point.
Anyway, the behavioral therapist lent me a book which was part of a course she took many years ago during her training: Active Parenting Handbook by Michael H. Popkin, Ph.D.. Today I came to a chapter discussing the power of encouragement and building on the child's strengths, and one of the "family enrichment activities" is to write a letter of encouragement to your child. I absolutely agree that putting something in writing carries extra weight and may be something he can keep with him and look at in the future if he needs a reminder of how wonderful he is.

This is my first letter of encouragement to him:

June 6, 2015
Dear Sebastian,
Yesterday when I took you to the playground I was so proud of you for standing up for that spider. You showed so much empathy and determination to do what you know is right. I just love how caring you are. I know it is frustrating when others don’t seem to listen or understand, and not everyone will, but when you speak what is right some people will listen and take your words to heart. When you walked away, that same boy who had kicked the spider decided to protect the spiders! I saw him play with another boy, placing sticks into the sand saying “okay, now we’re going to save the spiders”. Your actions made a difference, Sebas! Great job J

Mommy and Daddy love you so much

Mind you, at the park his behavior wasn't stellar. The reason behind his actions were just, but he screamed and cried bloody murder when the boy kicked the spider. He had a fit and yelled at the kid, wagging his finger at him "you have no right to kill spiders!" (which I'm quite proud of). At one point when another kid said he was going to kill spiders (to intentionally push my son's buttons), my son punched the kid in the stomach. I didn't see that happen, but as we were leaving the kids were yelling that Sebas had hit one of them, so I stopped and asked Sebas what happened. I asked if he had hit the boy and he said "YES! He said he was a spider killer". I told him that it's good he's trying to protect the spiders but it's not okay to hit, and I sent him to apologize to the kid who just kept running away with his group of friends, ignoring my son. So I called him back to me so we could leave. Hey, at least he tried to apologize. Since I had lectured him a bit about not hitting I didn't want that "bad behavior" to be the thing he remembered.

When he finished reading the letter his eyes lit up, "Thank you!" and he hugged me tightly around the neck. When I asked him what he wanted to do with the letter he said "let's hang it on my wall". 
I highly recommend you notice the good aspects of your child(ren)'s behavior and put it in writing. It will make their day, and their pride will make yours. I plan on writing many more of these and would love to read any letters of encouragement you have written or will write to your child(ren).
Sebastian, the Animal Activist

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