A very important lesson.
When we’re young we’re told ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ but I can safely say from personal experience that this is not true.
Words hurt. Words hurt a lot.
Growing up with Asperger’s I had a lot of nasty remarks thrown my way and to this day they still make me doubt myself sometimes. When you spend years being told you’re weird and not wanted it’s hard to unlearn the negative thinking associated with those remarks.
That’s why I think the Toothpaste Experiment is a really important experiment to do with your children.
The Toothpaste Experiment requires just what you think it would, a tube of toothpaste.
To conduct the experiment all you have to do is get your child to squeeze out the entire tube of toothpaste.
After they have done this then instruct them to try and put all the toothpaste back into the tube.
Of course it’s impossible to put all the toothpaste back into the tube, but therein lies the point.
Once we say or write something mean to someone else we can’t undo the hurt those words cause so it’s best not to say anything hurtful at all.
Many parents hope that their children will be geniuses or popular but for me the most important thing for me is that my children are kind.
I don’t care if my child doesn’t get top marks in every subject but I would care if I found out they were being cruel to one of their classmates.
At the end of the day it costs nothing to be compassionate to the people around us and it’s up to us as parents to lead by example.
We have no idea what other people are dealing with in their personal lives, some could be going through grief or similar heartache, being kind is the least we can all do.
