How to teach a child how to avoid injuring people.

This article is not about children who hit or
deliberately hurt people.  It's about children who
are careless and hurt others by doing unsafe things,
making sudden moves, causing "accidents" etc.
Here I give some suggestions about how to teach
these children to be more careful.

The rule is:  Don't injure others.  But that rule
is hard to follow.  How do you do that?  It's
baffling.

I suggest:

-- expressing what to do in positive terms:
what to do rather than what not to do.

-- making it into a short list of simple
instructions.

-- designing each instruction to be easy to
memorize, easy to understand, easy to do
and easy to see clearly whether one is
doing it or not.

-- getting the child to say the instructions,
at a variety of times and as applied to a
variety of situations.

-- getting the child to carry out the instructions,
again at a variety of times and situations.
Repetition leads to habit.

-- praising the child for saying or doing the
instructions.

-- using words like "responsibility", "gentleness",
"patience", "self-control" etc. while praising the
child, to encourage the child to believe he/she
is capable of developing these traits and to help
the child recognize these traits in him/herself.

-- giving the child a mild "logical consequence" for
breaking the rules;  but making it many small consequences
for many infractions of small rules, rather than
waiting until someone gets hurt and giving a
big punishment.  Just having to take a 10 second
interruption to play to talk things over with a
parent can be enough of a negative consequence.

This is what it might look like:

Parent watches children play tag and sees
child touch another child just a little too roughly --
although the other child doesn't seem to mind.

Parent:  Come here!
Child: (does nothing)
Parent:  I said, come here!
Child: (comes)
Parent:  What's the rule?
Child: What rule?
Parent:  What's the rule about touching?
Child:  I was playing tag!!!
Parent:  The other child agreed to play tag, so
you had that child's permission to touch, that's right.
Now, when we touch people, how do we do it?
Child:  With our hands.
Parent:  How do we touch with our hands?
Child:  (looks baffled)
Parent:  We touch gently.  Now, pretend we're
playing tag and show me how you can touch gently.
Child:  (touches parent gently on the arm)
Parent:  Good!  You're showing gentleness.
Now when you go and play tag, how will you
touch the children?
Child:  Gently!
Parent:  Right!  You're showing safety-awareness.
Go and play.

A couple of minutes later the child touches someone
too roughly again.

Parent: Come here!
Child: (does nothing)
Parent: I said, come here!
Child: (does nothing)
Parent walks over to child and stands in front
of child.
Parent:  What did I just say?
Child: You said come here.
Parent:  Where was I when I said that?
Child: Over there.
Parent:  So, let's go over there.
(they go.)
Parent: What's the rule?
Child: Touch gently!
Parent: That's right!  Good memory!  Go and play.

After a few times of having their game interrupted
whenever he/she touches too roughly, the child will
probably learn to prefer the convenience of touching
gently and not being interrupted.

Note that each dialogue ends with the child
giving a right answer and getting praised for it.

Note that the parent is not just talking to the
child, but is getting the child to do things
like saying the rules.

Simple safety rules might include:

-- Before touching someone, ask the person if it's OK.

-- Touch gently.

-- Sometimes it's OK to give someone a big push,
like on a swing.  Before giving a big push,
     -- ask the person if it's OK.
     -- look around and see what people or things might get in the way.