3 Years back I was in India for a relative’s marriage functions. During those days I was supposed to meet few of my relatives whoa re actually very old (80 plus) and it was much required meets. I was bit scared because these kind of relatives are very well experienced and keep meeting on with several relatives in month.Their opinion about kids actually matters a lot. I knew my kids well but still I went their places to meet and later on I heard a lot about my both kids.So many praises. So many wonderful words.
The moment I was about to stepped in their hose I told few things to my both quite understanding kids. They followed my advises seriously and later on they got well deserved praises and kept following those advises till date.
Kids actually needs some real guidance with serious face and kind words.That’s it.They will understand and keep behaving well for rest of the life, we just need to praises their sincere efforts from time to time.
1- Warm wishes, touch and graceful behave matters – Kids need to know that how much warm happy faces matters to elder ones, touching feet or shaking hands or kissing the cheeks matters.Not being noisy or chaotic makes the elder ones more comfortable that kid is not running here n there or being loud in talks.We should tell kids to be gentle, laugh aloud and be warm in first half of the meeting.It relaxes the anxiety in grand parents/elderly relatives.They feel less energy is being wasted.Finally they feel comfortable and relaxed.
2- To listen and answer them carefully – Yes lot many times the elderly people lose their hearing capabilities and we need to explain this to kids that how we should not feel irritated if a same question is asked again and again.So reply it little bit louder and more politely if asked again.They are taking interest in you this matters a lot.They want to know about you this is a rel pleasure.Isn’t it?
3- If offered eat and avoid wastage – May be they worked very hard in their life.Every elder person knows the value of last remaining medicine tablet.They know the value of food earned the hard way.They lived a different era from others.They cooked themselves may be.So ask kids to eat quietly, ask about it and not to take big portions and waste it later. It makes elder people happy that kids are eating tastefully, carefully and without wastage too.
4- To not touch or mess up with their households – It is very usual for elderly ones to get a proper helper in house.If your kids are messing up with their household or things or touching them it will be a big problem for the elderly ones to manage things after you leave. So ask and train the kids to not to touch ANY single thing in and around.Just ask them to sit in one place or move around smoothly without making any chaos.
5- To not use gadgets – Gadgets come very expensive. May be you can buy Ipad for your kid and he carries it around.May be he can play games for a while with grand parents or elderly relatives and they feel happy for a while but later on they will feel that their own kids are not taking proper care of them by not buying them such things. Or may be they will feel avoided while kids are busy in their gadgets.Just try to keep kids engaged in personal talks.But yes you can carry loads of pictures of neighborhood, trips, schools or office to show to them so that if they are bit interested you can show them to make them feel connected.
Happy Christmas in advance!