Good Ideas: How to Be Your Child’s (and Your Own) Best Teacher

Michael Rosen shared some commandments in his book-"Good Ideas: How to Be Your Child’s (and Your Own) Best Teacher". These are very important if we are to create a child sensitive society and ensure holistic development of children.

“I carry in my head some guiding ideas – commandments if you like – that I try to stick to when it comes to working alongside my children. Like any commandments or resolutions, it’s much easier to write them down than it is to stick to them. They are then ‘best intentions’.

1. I will try never to tell children to shut up.

2. I will try never to say to children that they are stupid.

3. I will try never to tell children that they are not good enough.

4. I will try not to make children anxious and worried about not understanding something, or not being able to do something.

5. I will try to give children real choices in matters to do with their interests, tastes, reading and the like.

6. I will try to involve children in decisions to do with their own lives.

7. I will try not to mock, diminish, denigrate or belittle anything that they do or care about.

8. I will try to take every question and query they make as serious and either do my best to answer it or – given the time – offer to help them find it out for themselves.

9. I will try to build children’s confidence.

10. I will try to ‘be there’ – whether that means hanging out, mucking about, playing, going out, thinking up interesting things to do, or turning up for key events that matter to that particular child.

11. I will try to listen, not to dive in and finish sentences, not speak for children when other people ask them questions.

12. I will try not to pretend that I find everything easy, or that I know everything, or that I always know what’s right, or that I have never made mistakes.

13. I will try to apologize when I’ve got something wrong.

14. If children discover there is something that they’re interested in, I will try to support it in any way they and I can think of.

15. I will try not to take over our children’s interests or appear to know more about them than our children do.”