Sometimes, children can be mean. Yes, they can be very mean. This is not cute, this is not a sign of maturity, and this is not acceptable. I want to be blunt about this, because when we don’t encourage kindness and compassion in children, we have to remember that we are creating teens and adults that lack kindness and compassion as well. If we want to have the type of nation that is built on Christian principles, we must teach our little people how to do this.
Firstly, the key to raising a child who demonstrates kindness and compassion is to begin by training our minds to notice kindness and compassion. Yes, the minds of us as parents. When we notice it, we can praise it. This encourages more of the same behavior. Kindness and compassion can seem like abstract values to children, so noticing them allows them to tie real life behaviors to them. Often, we notice the bad behaviors more than we notice the good behaviors. Bad behaviors get highlighted, and good and kind behaviors get no attention.
Let’s use a basic example of praising behaviors. Imagine you have a baby that is about to start walking for the first time. When they take these first few steps, we fill them with praise, hugs, kisses, and smiles. The baby thinks…hey…this gets me a lot of attention. Let me try this again! We continue to give them this attention until walking becomes a normal behavior and we tend to stop praising it. So, when it comes to kindness, I want you to think of this example. If when a child is kind and compassionate, and is praised as a young child, they are more likely to continue the behavior…even when praise is no longer always there.
Children are generally very good receivers of kindness and compassion. They tend to get it from their parents and caregivers all the time. When we help them become givers of kindness we elevate their feelings of happiness, improve their well-being, reduce instances of bullying in our schools and communities, and enrich relationships. These basic virtues are extremely powerful, not only to the receivers, but to the givers.
So how can we notice kindness and compassion? Help children become conscious of what they are doing. For example, if your child is picking up the toys, rather than just saying ‘thank you’, say “thank you for picking up the toys.” If big sister runs to comfort little brother when he takes a tumble, highlight the fact that she ran to him to comfort him.
When actions contribute to the welfare of others, point it out. “You said , ‘thanks for having me over’, so your friend knows that you appreciate them inviting you.”
You can also simply add a descriptive tag to an action in progress such as, ‘that was kind,’ ‘that was helpful, ‘that was thoughtful.’ When we do this, we are yet again moving from the abstract to the concrete. We are teaching our children what these qualities, look, feel and sounds like.
By noticing compassion and kindness we are making our children more conscious. This consciousness helps to stimulate the development of higher centers of the brain that help our children to grow in many domains. As mentioned earlier, we tend not to have a problem noticing the negative.
So, to conclude, remember that we tend to get more of what we focus on. When we focus on our children being kind, we will likely get more of it than we expect! Model acts of kindness for your children to see. Encourage them in coming up with ways that they can be helpful to others.