Try role-play

On our independence day (15th of August), I was invited to a facility that houses girls that are under various kinds of duress and there were about 30 to 40 kids. After the flag hoisting, they put up a cultural program. They had different kinds of programs including dancing, singing and skits.

One that I was very impressed with is a skit where a group of girls will play roles of different characters. They put up skits on ‘value of education’, ‘religious tolerance’ and ‘importance of education’ etc. One of the girls was asked to give a speech to address the other girls and she became an instant motivational speaker. She spoke about the value of freedom and what each of them can achieve.

I remember as a kid doing stage acting and what it did to me. Whenever someone (especially a child in his/ her formative years) engages in role-playing and if it happens to be a positive role, it certainly going to influence the child accordingly.

At my house, since our girls like singing and dancing, we do role-playing of concert singing. They hide behind a certain while daddy announces loudly (holding his hand like microphone) “Ladies and Gentleman, we have two famous singers from India and please welcome Lydia and Lily by giving them a big hand”. Auditorium is full because mom and dad are watching. Now this event is becoming sophisticated because they want to come with costumes and it is fine with us.

If you want to teach something to your children, try to talk less and help them to act it out by themselves. May be you can help them to assign the roles and giving them a script.