GIVING AND RECEIVING
The strange thing was that for every drop he helped put in someone else's bucket, he felt another drop in his own bucket
Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer - How full is your bucket?
How full is your bucket? is a great book for getting children to think about how our feelings impact our actions. The idea is that we all have an invisible buckets that we all carry around with us. When our bucket is full we feel great, we can be kind, we can behave well but when it is empty we feel awful and often behave pretty badly too! Felix also learns that if he does a kind act for a friend, not only does his friend's 'bucket' get filled but he notices that his bucket fills up too!
Turns out that Felix has stumbled upon something extremely powerful here. If we go out of our way to help others, it is good for our own mental health and sense of wellbeing. Dr Bettina Hohnen said a similar thing at our Connected Lives First Birthday. She outlined the research which is showing that the act of helping others is incredibly good for teenagers, especially those struggling themselves.
Teenagers have a bit of a reputation for being ego-centric and self absorbed but actually it's not true. For them and for everyone we (almost) get more when we give to other people because we are such social beings it's really good for our mental health when we help others.
Dr Bettina Hohnen, Connected Lives First Birthday
Human beings are social beings, we were designed to be in groups, therefore it makes sense that we feel good when we are able to do something which helps out someone else. How many of us scrambled to try and help 'in some way' in the midst of the pandemic and lockdown? We did it not because we were bored but because we desperately needed to do something to make a difference. I myself tried to volunteer to sew masks. Given my general sewing abilities I think there are medics all over the UK who should be grateful that I wasn't allowed to contribute in this way! I ended up volunteering to give 'check in' calls for vulnerable people and saw again that when you give you receive back more. In fact with one particularly wonderful person my weekly 'check in calls' to her became one of the highlights of my week.
So let's encourage our kids (and ourselves) to look out for each other, to try and spot people who might need a helping hand or a kind word and give it. How about having a family 'day of secret good tasks' where everyone is given another family member to do something nice for? Rules are it needs to be something they'd like and you mustn't let on who did it! Thinking outside of our immediate family, look around you and see who comes to mind, there are many people struggling to cope right now, if we do what we can to help, we will find that we receive a lot more along the way.
Jenny Peters
2/12/20