Just like a new calendar year, a new school year should mark so many traditions. While we get lambasted with Social Media posts of friends' children going off to school with signs labelling the passage of time (a child holding a blackboard declaring publicly their name, age, teacher, grade and school). These sort of acts are external and not internal. Let the back-to-school focus be on others, not self.
3. Look around your neighborhood, church/temple and community and reach-out. Has someone recently had a baby? Lost a loved one? Adopted a new pup? Lost a cat? Have your child connect through gift or letter, delivered in person. This is such an excellent exercise to develop human connection and maturity in the current impersonal, anonymous world we live.
4. Create an atypical chore list for the upcoming school year. The typical chore lists many families pin to their refrigerators tend to be self-focused (make bed, get dressed, brush teeth). These things should just be a given. Let's expand our children's mindset and kindness for their family unit and larger world. The atypical chore list should have one daily, weekly and monthly external focus.
For instance, daily feed the pets, weekly take trash to curb and monthly write a note to an elderly family member, send a care package to a charity or help feed the homeless. The list of externally focused chores are endless. This helps build empathic, happy little people rather than depressed self-aware narcissists.
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