My friend has just arrived at school and I’m so happy! I’ll give him a big, great hug! But…wait a minute: when I hug him, he doesn’t look happy at all.
Does it mean that he doesn’t love me? Is he mad at me? Did I do
something wrong? What can I do now?
Expressing our feelings can be tough sometimes, that’s why we decided
to learn a simple method that we can use everyday. Some children love to hug and be hugged, like these two little girls.
But some kids don’t like it, so we learned that asking our classmate if she
or he wants to be hugged it’s always the best choice. If the answer is a
sincere and honest “no”, there is no reason to worry. We can use other
ways to express our feelings, like this cute little heart we can make with
our hands. It doesn’t matter if we can’t make it perfect, the only thing
that matters is that we really want to share our love without hurting our
friend’s feelings.
Some children prefer to use other ways to communicate their affection,
like a strong, noisy high-five!
What about closing a deal? For example after a long, tiring discussion
about who gets to use the toy that everybody wants to use? We can
discuss, argue, and then ask to the teacher for help. After we find a
solution to our problem, we can close our deal with a hand-shake.
Sometimes we feel a bit tired, maybe we miss our mom and dad, and
what’s better than a friend who wants to help us, trying to tell us a
funny story? In this case, after we laugh together, we can give each
other a fist-bump to show that we really appreciated his effort.
Expressing our feelings may be tough, but we are learning to do it in the
nicest way possible.
