Thine Bucket Overflow-ith

Violet's elementary school started a bucket-filling campaign in response to the Bullying epidemic happening in schools these days.  If you are not familiar with the concept.  I do not explain it well as every time I do, the response is often a quizzical look followed by, "where is the bucket?"  Then I blab on about the fact there is no actual, physical bucket, but the idea of a bucket being filled by being nice, helping, & giving compliments. Conversely, you can dip into someone's bucket by being hurtful, mean, and selfish.  Vi took to it like a fish to water (in a bucket, hehehe)!

Every night before we go to bed we talk about what filled our buckets and how we filled someone's bucket, but never what or who dipped into our bucket.  I tend to use the bucket-dipping concept in the moment of dippage (it's a word- coined by me :-).  For example, I might say to Vi, "your potty words are dipping in my bucket, let's try filling it back up with appropriate words." A great visual to add a punch to the teachable moment.  Vi has some good bucket fillers like, one-on-one time with Mommy at Hyde Collection's art class, and sometimes silly ones like ice cream during gym class.  Although, writing it now, it occurs to me ice cream is probably not so silly to a first grader.....

I have even gotten my sister in on bucket fillers.  We text each other every night (or morning depending on whose kids are running amuck at bed time) with that's day awesomeness.  It is tough sometimes to stay positive when it has been a particularly tough day.  My sister runs a Head Start program and has 2 challenging kids at home (she needs more like a barrel) so this is a great way to end a day.  It forces you to realize something good may have happened even it felt like the whole day was a horrible crapfest.

It also reminds me part of being a parent is teaching my kids how to eventually be productive happy adults. I want them to be bucket-fillers and recognize & remove or enlighten the dips (aka dippers) in their lives.

Oh, pinterest---- filling my bucket whilst dipping my time......http://pinterest.com/mel_dillard/bucket-filling/