Dear parents,

Children (and adults) often say phrases like “this is not my concern, it's not my problem!” to avoid the responsibility of finding solutions to collective problems in their environment, as a defensive method against feeling helpless and unable to face these issues individually.

Often, addressing challenges and difficulties requires teamwork skills, which parents help children develop. When children understand the value of working together, they realize it's a way to deal with problems, as seen with the group of animals dealing with the flood and subsequent destruction.

Parents play a crucial role in supporting children to collectively face challenges with their peers, such as classmates, neighbourhood kids, soccer teams, school choirs, taking an active role, enhancing their sense of influence on their surroundings, deepening their sense of responsibility, and finally fostering a sense of belonging in different aspects of their lives.

Let’s Talk

• About problem-solving: We can ask our children about the problems the animals faced, how they behaved, how the problem escalated, and how they found a solution.
• About feelings and thoughts: We can trace the drawings, describing the characters’ emotions and actions in different situations. We can give “qualities” to each character.
• About Cooperation and confidence: With our children, we can recall some family and school challenges that everyone successfully overcame as a group, emphasizing the importance of each person’s role. We discuss with our children their roles in overcoming these challenges.

Let’s Explore and Initiate

• We contemplate; we can search for and present problems in our neighbourhoods and towns, such as garbage issues, and brainstorm ways to address them.

Let’s Act

• We can act out situations where our child may face individual or group problems and discuss ways to cope with them, such as a disagreement with a friend, losing a game, a student getting injured on a school trip, or facing bullying from an individual or a group.

Let’s Create

• With our child, we can prepare an “I Can Jar:” Together, we can write phrases on paper scraps describing things we can do together that benefit us and others. We can identify a positive change we want to make, for example: “I can say no to bullying,” “I can help a friend in need,”