I was so distracted by the election this week, I felt like the area of my brain that usually deals with Happy Shopping Things was completely knocked out of commission.

I was thinking maybe today we could talk about the resources we use to teach kids to get along with others—especially to prepare them for times when we’re apart from them and not able to coach them through a difficult interaction (”Now give that toy back to him. Now tell him you’re sorry for taking it so roughly. Now ask if you may have a turn after him”).

It has been hard during this election to explain to the children the rules that should be followed, when “shouldn’t” feels like kind of a stupid concept in the face of “look, everyone’s doing it anyway.” “Children, people shouldn’t state their views aggressively or smugly or self-righteously in forums where those views will hurt/anger their friends and family and cause pointless, unpleasant debates that lead nowhere and change no one’s mind about anything. Despite what you may have heard about Facebook.”

This morning before school we worked on the concept that people should be gracious losers and even more gracious winners.
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My older son is going to be 4 in a few weeks, and I was initially going to write a post covering Birthday Present Ideas for Four-Year-Olds and include all the little product images and links and so on . . . but I have a related topic I’d rather talk about. It has to do with greedy children, and more specifically, how not to raise them.
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