As I talked them through how to be kind and then allowing them not to be kind, I tried to turn the time back to showing the child how to put himself in the other person’s shoes. So I asked, “Would you like your sister breaking your Lego creation?” The mom that was playing her son answered “I wouldn’t care.”
This allowed me to use one of my favorite mothering phrases, “None the less, your sister doesn’t like her creation being knocked down so you are not being considerate of her when you do that,”
Did you hear that? “None the less” is a wonderful little phrase, when a child is being difficult or being contradictory. I am absolutely sure this boy would not like it if his sister broke his hard worked at project, yet instead of getting into a verbal debate with him, the discussion can be controlled by mom with the phrase, “none the less.”
As an added note, if mom remembers, she could at a later time hold this child to his words. When mom sees this boy working on Legos, she could go over and break up his project. As the son gets upset, mom can calmly remind him of his earlier declaration and enforce that just as he doesn’t like his hard work being wrecked, neither does his sister.