The Bucket Filling Station (or, Even Parent Coaches Need Reminders)
Sometimes Santa brings tangible gifts that you can only use once, like the mound of chocolate and other candy that filled our stockings this year. Sometimes Santa has brought things that both kids could use, like the art table. This year, Santa focused more on experiences. In everyone's stockings, there were several coupons with things like "Girls' Tea" or "Figure-Painting with Daddy." But the thing I am most excited about is our Bucket-Filling Station, because that is a series of experiences that I hope will a) become a habit and b) serve us all well now that the kids are in high school.
First of all, I learned about the concept of "filling buckets" from the book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud. It's a very sweet book my kids read every year they were in elementary school as part of the local YMCA's Project Cornerstone. I was one of the volunteers who read to kids in the classroom—even kids in other classrooms—because the stuff they covered was that important. In a nutshell, everyone has an invisible bucket, and we make choices that can either add to others' buckets or take from them. A full bucket means you feel happy and connected. An empty bucket means the opposite.
So why did I—er, Santa—decide to start using this metaphor from elementary school with my newly minted high schoolers? I mean, can you hear the eyes rolling from there? How on earth is this remotely developmentally appropriate?
For this very simple reason: that book has sold over 3 million copies in a variety of languages because it's true for all humans, no matter how old they are.
Here's how I'm seeing it. High school is hard. It's just a hard time of life. The kids are figuring out who they are, what they value, and what kind of adult they want to become. It's a lot. And I want to find ways to help them get used to checking their buckets on a regular basis. In fact, you'll notice in the photo that we ALL have a bucket, because we all need to do that more regularly.
So the instructions from Santa were:
Locate your bucket.
Check inside to see if anyone has left any notes for you.
Any time someone else does something kind for you, or is amazing, or just makes you smile, put a note in their bucket telling them so.
Any time you feel like your bucket is a little low, go check the station and get some reminders of how awesome and loved you are.
I love this concept for all ages. If your child is too young to read, you can read the notes others leave for them and help them write notes for siblings and parents. For older kids, give a gentle nudge and then let them read the notes on their own without an audience.
But honestly, this one is more for me and my husband in some ways...because even though I'm a parent coach, I'm a parent first. And parents are busy--we forget to do this stuff on a regular basis! This is a way for us to practice "noticing the good" in our teenagers. Not that we hyper-focus on the bad, mind you, but a lot of times what kids hear out in the world does zero in on the "bad." You're too tall/short/fat/thin/etc. So here at home, at least, we can create an environment that reminds them of all the things about them that are amazing and wonderful. We can remind them of all the good they put out into the world and have tangible evidence that they are seen in the best possible light at least some of the time.
No matter where your child is on their timeline, the Bucket-Filling Station is one of those parenting practices that over time really retrains your brain. Instead of calling out the negatives or criticizing (which was a common experience for a lot of us in our own childhood), you start to notice the positives more readily. And because you call them out, your kid starts to notice them as well. Before you know it, everyone is on the positivity train...and everyone's bucket is a lot fuller. After all, what better gift could we give our children—and ourselves—than the habit of seeing and celebrating the good in each other every day?
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