Celebrating Differences Amongst Kids

Depending on your children’s different abilities, personalities, behavioral challenges and goals they may require different levels of support. This may look like one child needing help with their homework while another can be independent. The child that needs more help may naturally compare themselves to their sibling and can use positive self statements to remind themselves that they have other strengths and are simply different than their siblings, not better nor worse. These could include statements such as “My family loves me no matter what” or “I am doing my best.” If they do get upset or come up against something that is difficult for them, the way in which you talk to your children may vary as well. One child may need more time to process what happened or need help using coping skills to calm down before they are able to talk with you. What each child is capable of providing to you may be dissimilar where one child may be able to fully explain their thoughts and feelings whereas a few words for another child is a large accomplishment. Take this into account when working to problem solve with your children that one method such as role play may work best with different kids yet need to be vastly adjusted for others. If one technique isn’t working you may try pulling up a video clip from their favorite movie to further demonstrate the idea you are trying to explain or using a worksheet to fully lay out the events and everyone’s thoughts as feelings such as a thought record. It is worth the time to try different methods with your kids to find the one that is uniquely best for them!

When things are going well the way in which you reward your kids will likely look different as well. An immediate reward, such as time on an iPad, might be required by one child where another can use a sticker chart or points system where they can wait for a larger reward over an extended period of time. One of our favorite reward systems for siblings is the classroom intervention or communal marble jar. This is where all siblings are working towards one common goal. The goal could be a reward of a trip to the arcade or a movie night as long as it is something all siblings want. All marbles as rewards go into one communal jar however the way in which each child earns marbles varies depending on their specific goals. For example, if siblings get into an argument one may be rewarded for using kind words while another is given a marble for being able to move on with a positive attitude. Frontloading can be very helpful by clearly laying out each child’s goals prior to beginning the marble jar so that the expectations have been presented and understood by everyone. This way while still working on their individual goals, siblings all work towards a common goal and win or lose together. 

 

Betsy Blackard from Language of Listening provided a great example to celebrate differences amongst kids in her blog “Coaching You”[1]. She explains, “Ever since we were little, my older sister Colleen has been concerned with “fairness.” She was aware of every discrepancy between the two of us, from the amount of attention we got from our parents to the number of apple slices we each had on our plates at snack time…Every time my mom was dividing, measuring, or pouring something, Colleen would be called over to assist because of her keen eye for exact equivalence. She wore it proudly, and it really helped that during moments she might have used as “proof” that my parents cared more about me, we were able as a family to identify that it was just her strong sense of “fairness.” This describes how her mother was able to alter the situation from making everything “fair” to highlighting a strength of her sister’s and commending that quality. No matter how similar each child’s upbringing is with the same home, parents, pets, school, etc. no child is the same and that is something we should be excited about as it provides the opportunities to praise their different strengths as well as promote empathy and compassion for others.

 

 

[1] Blackard, B. (2018, June 06). Does Fair Mean Equal? Retrieved from https://www.languageoflistening.com/does-fair-mean-equal/