My perception that a lot of these suggestions, while valuable, seem to be, for lack of a better description, small changes, learnings, or alterations of behavior.
If it's worth anything for my first post, the two ideas that so far seem to have the best potential for profound personal growth, are 1) 30 day vow of spoken silence, and 2) have a conversation (not just speak) with a new person each day.
The 30 day vow of silence is especially noteworthy. For those who haven't tried something like it before, and it would be more difficult with children, it can profoundly change your awareness of the nature of communication. Not simple human communaction, but all aspects of communication. As an earlier poster alluded to, a great deal of human communication is non-verbal - for to grasp, to really understand how deeply true that is, something like a week, or 30 days of silence, really is neccessary.
For myself, doing something like this in my youth altered my perceptions of the world around me irrevocably for the better, and in a way I could not have understood at the outset. Children especially, I noticed, respond more powerfully, and communicate more strongly with their bodies than they do with words and spoken concepts they may not yet fully understand.
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