Putting Yourself in the Children’s Shoes: A Great Start for Parents and Teachers
Imagining your childhood days can teach you a lot about nurturing your children.
I have been involved in teacher training for the past ten years and have trained thousands of teachers during that time. Whenever I start teachers’ training, I make sure to do an activity with them. They imagine the class they are teaching today and find answers to the following questions:
What did you like when you were in this group?
Did you dislike something?
What drew you toward study?
What things took you away from studying?
What kind of classroom environment did you like?
Which teacher did you like and why?
Which teacher did you dislike and why?
These questions prompt the teacher to consider how the children should be provided with the environment that they desire as students or that is appropriate for their studies. These activities give new teachers a good start and set them on the journey to becoming good educators.
When it comes to child upbringing, parents must be educated. In my opinion, it is parent training rather than child training because children mimic what their parents do. Parents should engage in this type of activity in order to understand what their children truly desire.
Parents should take some time to reflect on what they desired as children or at the age of their children. Parents should sit quietly alone for a moment, close their eyes, and search their own dim past for answers to the following questions.
What kind of attitude did you expect from your parents?
What did you expect from them?
What made them happy and what made them sad?
On what did they draw close to their parents and what did they draw away?
What attitude of parents did they dislike?
Were they influenced by their parents?
Where did they feel proud of their parents?
What parenting habits do they often miss?
Make separate lists of answers to these questions. Try to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Eliminate any habits you disliked from your parents in your childhood and try to adopt any correct habits you admired. This is an activity that, if done correctly and incorporated into your life, can completely transform your parenting style. You will become a parent that children are proud of and will tell stories about to others.
