In the third episode of the Parent Project Podcast, parents and grandparents talk about respect. How can we learn to respect each other within family? Podcast host Kate Nash dives into the personal successes and challenges of the participants in creating respectful home environments. Because home is the ideal place for your children to learn respect for all people.
What does respect mean to you and your family? How do you respect your children’s feelings and are they respecting yours? It might sometimes feel that way, but trust us, you’re not the only parent who feels disrespected by their kids every now and then.
“It happened to me last night, my daughter was really rude to me,” Natasha Kong says in this episode. “But the next morning, after having a rest and sleep, she came up and apologized for how she treated me. She knew she had treated me poorly, and felt bad about it. I think respect is also recognizing the impact of your actions on another person and taking responsibility for those actions.”
Listen to episode 3 here (or in your favourite podcast app)
For each episode of the Parent Project Podcast, host Kate Nash curated games, activities, resources, reflections and family practices to use, listen to, and do at home.
Games:
Fruit bowl game
- Have everyone sit in a circle on chairs with one less chair than there are people.
- To start, someone in the group, stands in the middle of the circle and states something that is true for them in relationship to respect, for example, To me respect looks like…, I feel the least respected when I am…, I feel the most respected when I am…
- Everyone who agrees with this stands up and moves to another chair in the circle.
- The person without a chair becomes the new person in the middle. Now they say something about respect that is true for them.
- Make sure everyone has a chance to answer each of the prompts.
Mystery Game
Have you ever been busted of clearing your child’s room of what you thought was junk, only to be affronted with tears over the loss of something really precious? We all keep treasures that hold value and are important to us for different reasons. Knowing the reasons why often offers powerful insights into who we are and what is important to us.
In this family sharing, invite members of your family to share and item or object from their life that is special to them. Have other family members guess the significance of these objects, and then have the person who’s object it was share why the object is so important to them.
Watch:
Reflections:
Answer these questions about respect with your family or reflect on them alone:
What does respect mean to you?
How do you show respect to your kids?
What does respect from your kids look like? How did your kids show you respect?
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being not at all and 10 being like all the time) how respected do you feel on a day-to-day basis?
What are some simple tools that you feel could create a language of respect in your home?
What are some tools that you hope could foster more respectful relationships within your family?
The Parent Project Podcast is sponsored by Island Savings, a division of First West Credit Union.
