Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen

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Let’s imagine a scene, where you take your daughter to a playground on a beautiful sunny afternoon. While playing on the slide, your daughter is almost slammed on the head by a boy who was impatiently sliding down after her. A few minutes earlier the same boy had caused another child to cry. The boy’s mother rushes over and hits him in the arm, aggressively scolding him, “I told you never to do that again, why don’t you ever listen to me? Now stop playing and let’s go home!” She then tugs and drags the boy away while he cries. The mother is evidently frustrated by the child’s action, but her method of educating and correcting the boy is counterproductive.

Now imagine a different scenario where a boy pushes a little girl off the slide. When his mother comes over, she doesn’t yell at the boy, rather she apologizes to the girl and her mother. She then grabs a toy and tells her son, “Hey, why don’t we play a game. Let’s go down the slide.” Hearing that his mother wants to play a game with him, the boy gets very excited and quickly goes up the stairs of the slide. “Go quickly, go quick!” the mother says, and proceeds to push him with the toy she was holding. The mother pushes him a bit too hard, and makes him slide down fast and fall on the foam board carpeted at the bottom of the slide; the boy then gets very upset. Noticing this, his mother walks up to him and says, “Look, isn’t it dangerous to get pushed like this? When you push other children just like I pushed you, they will also be very upset, won’t they?”, the boy then nods in agreement. What do you think will happen afterwards? From now on, the boy will most likely wait until the other children have reached the bottom of the slide before sliding down after.