Oh! Good old V day! With only two days to go now, I highly encourage you lovely parents to use this day to teach your children to be good people, feel empathy and most of all understand what love is.
When children feel love and know how to love they are given the most important and sometimes an under-looked tool for life. Feeling loved will build children’s confidence, resilience and happiness! I remember my Mother used to teach me to be like silk as it is incredibly strong but still was capable of being soft.
I have some valuable ideas you can use on this day to teach your child about love and make them feel loved all year round!
1- Children must love themselves!
In order to truly be happy in life, children must be taught to love who they are.
Let’s face it, the world out there is pretty confusing. Media is splashed with skin thin, unrealistic models who paint such an unrealistic image which is unattainable to reach.
We ALL are guilty of comparing each other and going around putting ourselves down but please remember that children will hear this and adopt the same mentality about themselves.
There is a very little part of our modern world which helps children grow and love who they are. Everyone is changing and constantly doubting themselves which can easily F our children up big time.
Use Valentines for this simple family activity!
- Involve as many family members as you possibly can and sit everyone down.
- Simple take turns to either write or say 3 things that each person loves about themselves.
- This could be anything just go with the flow and make sure you participate as well!
- Go on to talk about what we like about one another!
- This is a super simple activity but it brings the family close together and lets children look at themselves in a positive light!
Draw a big love heart with your child and write or draw everyone inside that loves them and that they love.
- Start by drawing a big love heart with your kiddo.
- Encourage them to take the lead and write everyone inside that they love!
- Develop the game further and ask them some questions like “Awh, and why do you love Mummy”? and “How do we show other people we love them”?
- This is such a lovely way to bond with each other and teach your child about love! Plus at the end, you’ll have a lovely picture to frame!
Have a little love dance!
I’m yet to meet a child who doesn’t love to get up and have a boogie! Children are at their happiest when they are moving with the ones they love and having fun!
- Choose a song your child likes and let loose with them.
- Time to have fun!
- Being joyful helps children to know and accept love back!
Build your child’s emotional intelligence!
This Valentines, have an extra special focus on what you say to your child by making them see how their loving acts affect others. Always by putting much more focus on positive behaviour, children will then present this behaviour time and time again!
Simply by saying things like “It made me so happy when you held the door open for me” or “Thank you for that lovely cuddle you gave me, how did it make you feel”?
Give back to the community
No matter if you are sitting on a pile of gold or you have empty pockets, it is important for children to know what they have in life and what others do not!
Very often, children are growing up in little bubbles a little oblivious to what is going on around them.
To show others love and be truly happy with our lives children must experience as much as possible. Giving back to the community teaches your children to show compassion and love to those who need it the most!
Donate to charity
- Have a clutter free day and explain where these items will be going and how happy it’s going to make children and grown-ups!
Check out the wonderful Salvation army where you can donate to!
Volunteer for a children’s charity
The amazing save the children do such incredible work!
Have a day out to a children’s home
Encourage your kiddo to physically see that not all children have had the same life they have! It’s one thing to tell children but a whole other story to let children see for their own eyes!
Make a family kindness jar
Try making a lovely kindness jar this Valentines which is a system of positive re-enforcement that will absolutely encourage kind and loving behaviour!
Think about what kindness could mean at different ages!
- For toddlers, it may be as simple as helping mummy pick up toys and saying thank you.
- For older kiddos, it may mean doing a chore without being asked to and not getting into arguments with siblings.
- For parents, it may mean paying each other a compliment or setting some time aside for each other.
All you have to do is find a lovely little mason jar like this one
And then fill it with a marble each like these, every time your kiddo shows an act of kindness and love
When your child has filled up your mason jar, it’s time for a special reward just for them!
Love our world
It’s super easy for children to take our world for granted! Our world is right under our noses and yet we bring children up to become oblivious to it and forget to nourish it. Below I have listed some really lovely ways you could spend Valentine’s day this year which will teach your child how important it is to love our world too!
Planting
By encouraging children to see that plants do not pop up by magic out the ground and that actually require a lot of hard work and love is a beautiful activity which will uncover your child’s empathy skills.
- Pop to the local shops with your little one and let them choose which flower/plant they would like to grow.
- Give them a list of all the things it needs to grow and encourage your child to help find them!
Once you have everything, tell your child that with lots of love put into this little plant, it will flourish and grow. But if we don’t take care and put our love into it, it will not grow! You can then go on to tell your child this is why love is so important for people! Without it, we cannot grow!
If you want to take an easy shortcut and avoid the shops, check out these lovely gardening tools for little green fingers!
Creative sprouts Grow your own Veg garden
Recycling
It’s one thing to ask your child to help take out the trash and another to teach them why we do it!
Have a cosy Valentines day in and watch a documentary or teach your little one why we need to nourish our world
- Check out this awesome DVD which shows recycling from a child’s eye!
- Or if you would rather read to your child this book is fantastic at teaching recycling and why we do it!
Put a Bird feeder in your garden together
Showing our world love means we have to show hungry animals love too! Spend a little bit of time this V day by teaching your child how important it is that we shoe kindness towards our little birdies and what might happen if we weren’t so loving towards them! Meripac Window Feeder
Whatever you end up doing this year remember the one main purpose of the day- love! Shower your family with love and snuggles and I am pretty sure it will be reciprocated! For now, I’m going to leave you with my favourite poem about love!
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror dimly but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
-1 Corinthians 13
Nanny M x 
Nanny Maryanne 
Great tips and loved the poem at the end!
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Thank you so much! x
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