Use Your Words Wisely – Respectful Communication.

The way you talk to your children, and the way you teach your children to talk to others, can have a positive or negative effect.

Moving from using negative to positive language with our kids is an import and effective positive parenting technique, but it’s also important to teach our kids that their words and they way they use them have power, and to help them learn to use their words wisely.

I often talk to my kids about the power of words and how we use them. Sometimes we use our words wisely, sometimes we don’t.

Everyone makes mistakes, or says things they regret in the heat of the moment, but learning to communicate respectfully is an important skill and these guidelines can help.

We’ve come up with this list of things to remember when communicating respectfully and trying to use our words in a more positive way.

• Offer kind words any time you are able. It will make a difference to someone, some time.
• Be positive. Negative words never bring anything good.
• The way you say it can be as important as what you say.
• Explaining how you feel will help you sort out most things.
• Say no when you need to, politely, without fear or guilt.
• Be clever and funny, not mean and funny.
• Be polite. Even if you disagree or are expressing your anger, be polite.
• Say it out loud, to everyone. If you can’t then maybe you shouldn’t say it at all.
• Take time to think of all the possible places your words may end up… gossip? The internet?
• Speak up when others need your support. Especially when they can’t speak for themselves
• “Would you like to play?” Or the equivalent adult version, is a powerful phrase that can heal much.
• Remember when words have hurt you. Try not to do the same to someone else.
• We all make mistakes, or have times when we are miss-understood. Apologies can be hard to give, but are usually worth it.
• Listen as often as you speak.

Free Printable ‘Use Your Words Wisely’ Respectful Communication Poster

If you are working on respectful communication with your kids at home, or with your class, and would like a fun reminder to go with this list of reminders, you can download a copy of the poster.

You can download the Use Your Words Wisely poster here.

This printable is an A4 sized pdf file, you will need a pdf reader such as adobe acrobat to open it. If you are printing on US ‘letter sized’ paper be sure to select ‘fit’ or ‘shrink to fit’ from your printer options.

Please remember that the printables at picklebums.com are for personal use only, you may not sell, share, or link directly to these files.

What would you add to this list of respectful communication guidelines?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this list of respectful communication guidelines. What else would you add to this list to help you and your kids, use your words wisely?

If you are working on making the shift towards using more positive language with your kids you might also like these parenting article: