I often tell my daughter – my almost 7-year old kid about the words Good Glasses, Bad Glasses. I saw her explaining the same to one of her friends too..:) So, what exactly are they? In short, Good Glasses – Bad Glasses is nothing but my simple version of conveying a message to my almost 7-year old kid  – ‘the way we look at people is the way we think about them; Treat them.’ 🙂

 

 

Very soon, my daughter will be turning 7. Congratulations to all the Moms of almost 7-year old kids on another step down the road toward growing up. 🙂 Along with that comes mood swing and many milestones as well. Seven-year-old children are standing firmly in between young childhood and the preteen years of middle school. They are in the transition phase. They want to make decisions on their own and many times they make good choices but yet they are not old enough or say matured to handle everything on their own. One such issue could be their Friends. Suddenly, words like Best Friends or Best Friends Forever (BFF) starts coming into picture. Your child may come home saying that s(he) has figured out that who his/her BFFs are..:) And may be the very next day the same person will not be the BFF anymore. Funny. Right? But think from the child’s point of view. They are just 7.

I was talking to one of my friends and she mentioned exactly the same. She said that nowadays, her daughter is getting upset on very small issues. And it’s not that she doesn’t realize her mistake but she can’t control it. I thought of reading about this topic little bit.

Here, I am sharing with you few lines from one of the articles “Psychologist Jean Piaget’s Four Stages of Development theory suggests that children can’t deal with certain tasks until they are psychologically mature enough to do so and it’s this maturing that causes the bad behavior at age 2-3, 6-7 and – I’m sorry to have to tell you – again at 11-12.” Another article says, “For a 7-year old in addition to their relationship to friends, family matters a lot. They like affection and attention from parents and models the beliefs of parents in regards to what is good and bad.”

Over the years, with experience we have learned how to deal with different type of people. We too face differences in the opinion among our friends but we know how to handle that. We don’t just stop talking to someone. But for kids nothing is Grey. It is either White or Black. We keep on telling them everyone is nice, everything is good. If you will be good then everything will happen well only. But honestly, is that true? We know the world is filled with all sorts of people. We cannot predict every situation. Sometimes kids have to learn on their own. It may be termed as “Learning the hard way”. So, how to explain it to our children? I thought of telling my daughter through the Good Glasses, Bad Glasses example. I told her that it’s the way we look at other people which forms our opinion about them. And our behavior towards them depends on our opinion. If we like someone for example our parents, no matter what they say we try to find something good in their talks. We all had some favorite teacher in school. Even if our favorite teacher will tell something little strictly, still we would think that there must be something good behind that and vice-versa. It is all because of our Good Glasses and Bad Glasses.

 

So, if choice is ours whether to wear Good Glasses or Bad Glasses then why not to pick Good Glasses?

What do you say? How do you explain your child about the same topic? I am sure there must be many experienced moms reading this post and there will be lot of different ways. Do share your thoughts.

If you want to read the two articles mentioned in the post, here are the links

Terrible Twos or Stroppy Seven and

Normal Behavior for a Seven Year Old

 

HAPPY PARENTING!!