Share which life lessons you feel are important to teach your child about with Day Out With Thomas

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Teaching your child positive values is one of the biggest jobs we have as parents - from working as a team to helping others, it’s important that children learn these lessons early on. With this in mind, Day Out With Thomas wants to hear about the values and life lessons that you feel are essential for your child to learn, and how you help them to apply these in real life.

Here’s what Day Out With Thomas has to say:

“Peep Peep! All aboard for a Day Out With Thomas!
Thomas, the Number 1 blue engine, and The Fat Controller have travelled all the way from the Island of Sodor for a day of family fun at a heritage railway near you. Meet Thomas and The Fat Controller, take a train ride and enjoy so much more!
Thomas & Friends episodes teach children about teamwork, friendship, and problem solving, values that we know are really important to you when letting your child watch their favourite programmes.
Day Out With Thomas™ is an annual event brings these values to life, and gives children and their families the unique opportunity to meet the classic storybook character Thomas the Tank Engine at heritage railways across the UK. Families can ride on a real steam engine, pulled by Thomas, and meet The Fat Controller! There’s also lots more to enjoy at each event. Activities may include children’s rides, soft play, toy play area, a live show, miniature railway, storytime, and meeting other engines and characters from Thomas & Friends.”

Which values are most important for your child to learn? Are there particular values your child has already learnt and implemented from their favourite TV characters? Can you think of a time your child exercised positive values and made you proud?

Whichever values you feel are important to teach your children, share them on the thread below for a chance to win. There will be 5x chances to win, with one poster winning a £300 voucher (from a list), and four posters each winning a family ticket (for a family of 4) to a 2019* Day Out With Thomas event of the winner’s choice – locations can be found here.

Thanks and good luck!

MNHQ
Standard Insight Terms and Conditions apply

*Events from 15 August 2019 onwards

The values which I would like my child to have is to see a person without any prejudice of their gender, colour, disability, and sexuality, the world would be a nicer place if we all accepted each other .

We have a little boy at my sons school who is wanting to transition, we were all written to and there was an assembly at school to help the children understand why the child was starting as a female the next term.

My son spoke to me about this, and said - I will still be her friend, and she can come to tea if she wants (I am sure I would not have been as accepting at the age of 7 - perhaps I would - but we lived in a very intolerant society 20 plus years ago.

We love children's television programmes which promote inclusivity, kindness and sharing.

That life is about doing your best not always winning at everything. Too many high achievers never learn the art of failure and are devastated when it happens to them.

I think it’s really important for them to realise that not everything will be easy or go right for them first time.
Perseverance and practice are really important qualities that I try to teach the DC. I think letting them realise that we are not all going to be brilliant but can still try and learn/have fun in the process is a very important concept.
Makes fort a more realistic and contented world view IMHO

There is so many lessons for a child but I think with manners a child will go everywhere, my daughter is 3 and she say please and thank u all the time, manner and respect goes a long way 👍🏻

Tolerance and thinking for themselves.

To be kind. I want my son to always be kind and accepting of others. That it’s ok to be different.

Not following the crowd if they know they are doing the wrong thing.

I have recently been teaching my 4yr old daughter consideration for others and acceptance of diversity. We are Caucasian and her best friend is of mixed heritage and he has experienced racism & discrimination already, despite only being 4 himself. This confused my daughter a great deal and so I seized the opportunity to utilise this as a learning opportunity.
She now fully understands diversity and how to be considerate of others. That sometimes even grown adults make mistakes.
One of the biggest positives to come from this, is that she now knows to respect other's opinions. That sometimes people will have a different opinion and whether it's wrong or right, she is to respect it, yet not let it change her behaviour towards them.

This is a lesson I think a lot of us need! ☺️

Which values are most important for your child to learn?

I want my children to be kind and always do their best.

Are there particular values your child has already learnt and implemented from their favourite TV characters?

My children have already learnt a lot of positive values but I can’t relate to a tv character example right now, sorry.

Can you think of a time your child exercised positive values and made you proud?

I’m often proud of my children, particularly when they share, are kind or thoughtful towards others but especially when they do this to each other.

There are so many life lessons - but I have taught my kids to always be honest and kind towards others. To treats others how they would be liked to be treated if they were in their shoe.

I think it is important to teach children kindness, friendship (how to make and keep friends) acceptance of the people around us. Thomas does this in an indiscreet way, There is a good gender balance of engines (unlike when I was young and they were all male engines (except the one in the Thomas movie - even then she needed 'saving' by a male) There is equality, forgiveness, acceptance of our failings without feeling bad about trying our best, all of which are good values for our children. Choo Choo and chuff chuff.

Kindness, respect, honesty and accepting/non judgemental. I think overall I try to teach them to be the best person they can be and be aware of how their attitude and actions effects people around them.

For us, I've taught my son that what someone says tells you more about that person than it does about you, so if someone says unkind things to you, it tells you something about them, and that you also need to think about what you say to other people because they'll do the same in return.

My son's had a couple of children in his class who have behaved horribly, told my son they won't be his friend because he has a good friend, in the class, who is BME British and they don't want to be friends with the BME kid. We talked about why the children might say such things, and what it means for them in terms of maybe trying to get a reaction / make other children feel unhappy, and why they might be doing that. We also flagged it with the class teacher

Which values are most important for your child to learn?

Learning to say sorry when they are wrong, learning to share, learning to accept others, learning to help others.

Are there particular values your child has already learnt and implemented from their favourite TV characters?

Being helpful - giving him some responsibility for helping me and his gran (weeding the garden, putting his dishes in the dishwasher, packing his bag for school - though this is checked just in case)

Can you think of a time your child exercised positive values and made you proud?

I felt proud when my DS1 give a homeless person his spending money, as 'he needed it more than me' it was only £2 but it meant the world to my son, and gave him a 'warm fuzzy' inside, the homeless person - I hope was genuine, and needed the money for genuine reasons.

The most important values I would like to teach my children are to have a sense of personal safety, self confidence and belief in themselves - yes they can do - just like little Thomas does time and time again - with help of others, on his own and through adversity.

I am proud of my DS when he tried tried and tried again to learn to ride his bike - and with not giving up, loosing his confidence is now a confident rider.

there are so many!

Resilience is an important skill. So I try to let DC deal with their own mistakes, but its so hard to take a step back some times.

I also try to teach DC not to compare themselves to others or want what others have. That's such a difficult one too.

I taught my children to have compassion for others because that's important to me. Then their sibling was born with a disability and it seemed to become the most important thing they had learned. They were kind, they made allowances and they put themselves out to make their sibling happy (although ds bringing home a traffic cone with a light on that he had pilfered because he knew his sibling would like it was taking it too far)

Dream big; love youself; be kind to others; it's okay to be wrong - say sorry when you are!

Wow. Tuesday Sunshine. I love your story.
I also am on the non-competitive angle, but mostly this has involved allowing my son to ‘cheat’ by playing cooperatively and not emphasising the role of ‘winner’ at games.

Agree with those saying kindness. Thinking about differences and fairness is another.

TV shows can help, but mainly dcs seeing adults around them modeling good behaviours.

I'm teaching my son about household chores ! He's only 5 so just little things like tidying his bedroom and taking his plate out . He's learning there are no genders tied to household jobs . I'm a single parent and his dad is pampered by his own mother who still does everything for him.... so I am teaching him how to be a good adult/ husband / partner.

Kindness, manners and treating others as you want to be treated!

Kindness is something we try to emphasise in our home. I try and discuss with the children privately or openly about kind things that they have done and how proud I am, or the greater impact of the kindness.
We love the Cinderella movie ‘have courage and be kind’

Equality and inclusivity is something I hope my kids will all grow up to value. I am especially proud of ds2 who always notices instances of sexism in books and films and gets annoyed at the injustice. He also decided of his own accord to spend less time with a friend who regularly talked down about girls and made remarks about how useless they were.