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Why Should You Encourage Your Kids To Love Garbage Trucks?
Trash is smelly and gross. For most adults, garbage is something to be avoided.
Parents may be inclined to discourage their children from playing with toy garbage trucks or fueling their fascination for the real thing.
However, a love of garbage trucks can teach many important lessons for children.
Teach Gratitude
Sanitation workers do a job many of us would prefer to avoid. The men and women who drive garbage trucks and work on sanitation teams accomplish physically demanding tasks day after day.
Encouraging your child’s love of garbage trucks can be a great opportunity to teach them the importance of gratitude for service workers.
Smiling and waving to the garbage collectors and shouting “thank you” as they pass by is an easy way for young children to practice gratitude.
Learn About Others
Young children often live in a bubble of close family and friends. Getting to know local sanitation workers provides an opportunity to learn about others.
Kids can learn valuable social skills as they interact with garbage truck drivers, asking questions and having conversations with someone new.
Pretty soon, they will look forward to waving to their new friend or learning something new about someone else.
Practice Cleaning Up
Clean-up is never fun for kids, but teaching children to throw away their trash is an important part of growing up.
You can make taking out the trash fun by tying the activity to the garbage truck.
Kids have to clean up their messes or help take out the trash to see the garbage truck.
The garbage truck is one way to make cleaning up an enjoyable activity for kids.
Environmental Education
For older children, the love of garbage trucks can spark a bigger conversation about the environment.
Children are naturally inquisitive, asking questions about what happens to the garbage loaded on trucks.
And you can use this time as an opportunity to teach your child about waste disposal, recycling, and how to responsibly discard trash.
As you throw things away throughout the day, ask which items should go in the trash can and which items can be recycled.
Over time, the practice will become a habit.