As a regular guest on the morning show, I was thrilled to lend my parenting expertise this past week on News 8 Morning Extra on the CW San Diego. I spoke about how parents can teach their children to be kind as they are heading back to school this fall in a segment titled: Back to School Lessons in Kindness and Sharing for All Ages! You can watch the entire segment at the bottom of this blog and I’d also like to expand on what I said LIVE ON THE AIR because 5 minutes goes pretty quickly and I have so much more to say!
First and foremost, no matter what age our children are, parents are always their child’s first and most influential teacher. Aside from academics, unless you homeschool, it is a parents job to teach and instill morals, values, and character – things like kindness, sharing, compassion, and empathy. Learning kindness and compassion stems from teaching empathy. Teaching children as young as possible and re-teaching it throughout childhood and adolescents is important for development and character building. Learning to put ourselves in other’s shoes and practice feeling what the other person is feeling is a skill and it isn’t always easy. And even though we innately want to help and love others, kindness, compassion, empathy, sharing, and caring are also social learned. The best way we can teach our children is by modeling kindness for them. As parents we are their role models. They will watch and mimic if we are kind and helpful to others. They will also quickly notice if we aren’t. We need to be kind if we expect them to be kind. Kindness starts with us. The adults. We need to be kind to each other first before we can teach our kids to be kind to each other. It is our responsibility to teach them what it looks like to be kind and what it looks like to share.
A little act of kindness goes a long way. Kindness is contagious and spreads easily. It’s really hard not to be kind to someone who is being kind to you. That old saying “pay it forward” hold true. It’s a domino effect that keeps spreading and spreading. As much as we are their role models, I’m sure our children can teach us a lesson or two on how to be kind, too! As adults we have lived a lot of life experiences and maybe aren’t as socially innocent as we used to be and need reminders time and again on kindness.
Most of us want our children to be intrinsically motivated to do good deeds. And most children want to do the right or the good thing. And depending on their cognitive level and developmental age, sometimes they also need to be extrinsically motivated. There is nothing wrong with praising children for when they do the right thing or do something kind for someone else. This is one way they learn! If they know they are behaving in a positive way, they will learn from the praise and want to repeat that same behavior again and again.
So what can we do as parents to teach our children these life lessons and skills? We can help teach these lessons by having children participate in activities like donating their toys, volunteering at a food bank or animal shelter, raising money for a class trip, etc. We can help them draw a picture or write a letter for a friend who is sick. We can bake cookies or make a meal for someone in class that may be going through a rough time. These lessons can be taught as early as toddlerhood and span all the way throughout adolescents.
When it comes to toddlers and preschoolers, a way I have found them to be kind and share more is to set aside specific toys ahead of time before a playdate. Not many children at this age want to share so getting into this practice before a friend comes over will help establish your behavior expectation and set them up for success ahead of time. Once they learn to share, they can learn how to take turns! Older teenage children can send a “just because” text or email to one of their friends just saying hello and letting them know they are thinking of them. They can pick a different friend each week and rotate all of their classmates throughout the year. Maybe they can even arrange to meet up with a different classmate once a week after school for coffee or a smoothie.
As adults we can also use our not so free time and create time in our busy schedules to volunteer and or reach out to a different friend or acquaintance once a week. Life is hard and there is a lot of negativity, competition, comparison, and cruelty in our world and it takes one person to put their foot down and stand up tall and say ENOUGH! I challenge and encourage you to be that person today and start making this world a kinder and better place.
Full segment: https://youtu.be/cAPRfNXWsb0
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