Community helpers are one of those groups of individuals that are encountered by many on a daily basis, and are one of those that work the hardest.
One day soon, children will meet these "daily heroes" of the community, and parents would not want to miss witnessing their kids express respect and gratitude to workers. Parents are encouraged to teach kids respect for workers as part of teaching them how to respect everyone as early as possible.
Lynn Louise Wonders, a licensed therapist, child development and parenting expert, and author, stressed how it is of much importance that parents help their children learn what it means to respect workers.
She further emphasized that it can become a part of who they are as they grow up and become adults if they learn early on.
How to teach children about respecting workers?
Here are tips for parents on how to teach their children about community helpers and why there is a need to respect them.
1. Model respect in daily interactions.
Parents should do what they preach. Teaching children respect would mean the kids should see parents doing it themselves.
Wonders said that this is the most important thing a parent can do to teach a child to show respect.
Parents should show respect to themselves, to their children, and to everyone they encounter. Say please and thank you to restaurant servers and grocery store cashiers and packers. Learn the name of the neighborhood's regular delivery person and ask how he/she is doing. Smile and say thanks to the group of workers that takes away the trash.
"I'd make it a habit to say, 'I really appreciate everything you do for our community. I don't know what we'd do without you' to people serving the community. The child will see it and hear it and the child will learn it," Wonders suggested.
Allow children to see what respect is and how it makes people happy, and they will mimic what their parents are doing as they grow, she added.
2. Talk about the contributions of people in the community.
Start discussions with your children and make connections for them about what people do for work and how families and individuals should show gratitude.
Parents should always grab the opportunity to explain to the children how the world is a better place because of community helpers.
In the market, parents can point out the person who stocks the vegetables or the one who bags the groceries, and say something that these people make it possible for the family to buy the food they eat.
Afterwhich, back to step 1, let children see their parents say thank you, or even more so, take the extra mile to make the workers' job easier like bagging some of the groceries to help and lighten their load.
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Let children know that 'every job is important'
3. Involve the children in a thank-you gesture.
Wonders encourages parents to make their children part of a project, because kids love being part of a project. So let them grab the opportunity to create artworks, simple gifts or thank-you notes for workers in the community.
Parents can give children the freedom to make drawings of the neighborhood's mail carrier or garbage collector. Parents and kids can also work together and stock a cooler with cold drinks to leave on the balcony for delivery people.
Wonders cannot help but stress on the importance for kids to know that every job and worker is important and should be appreciated.
4. Talk about one's work with the kids.
Parents need to make their children understand their own work, both at home and in the office, in terms they would easily absorb.
Open up to the kids about one's favorite parts and the most challenging parts of their job. Share with them about how working with others gets the job done. Share stories that show respect for co-workers and talk about when others showed back respect.
5. Give children real experiences they can hold on to as they grow.
Learning through experience is still the best way to learn, as they say. So, parents can do hand-on activities to get to know the community workers in the neighborhood better and understand a bit more about how they work and how the world works better with them.
Parents can take their children to a field trip to the firehouse, local farm, museum or the local library. Find a safe place to stay and watch a local construction site, planes, and trains. Visit a post office together, mail a letter and create a stamp. On the family's next lunch-out, ask to take a glimpse into a local restaurant's kitchen. Attend the community's next "Safety Day."
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