What does the world need? Kindness! We all want our children to be kind, caring people, but how do they learn to be? It starts with their adults. Our children mimic what they see, so modeling for them what kindness looks like is a lifelong task for us.
Even more important is to talk about what and why you’re doing. As parents, when we narrate our actions, we help build speech for our children as well as knowledge. For instance, “Oh, I almost forgot I want to write a thank you note to Mr. Green for helping me fix my flat tire yesterday! We need to pick out a nice card and tell him we’re thankful he stopped to help us. That will make him feel great!” This narrative piece allows our children to participate in our kindness, ask questions about it, and understand what tangible kindness looks and sounds like.
Too often, we say things we think our children understand, but they really don’t have a frame of reference. For instance, we might say, “Use kind hands.” Our children require a little more information. What do kind hands look like? “When we use ‘kind hands,’ we touch gently and softly, we don’t touch our friends when they don’t want to be touched. If we’re petting a dog, we move our hands more slowly and let them sniff first.”
Also important is to admit when we’ve made a mistake. If we’ve had a tough day and are short-tempered with our children, immediately apologize and make a correction. For example, “I’m so sorry I yelled at you when you spilled your juice. I was frustrated about something else and should have used my kind words.”
Model, talk, and define, every day all day. Our littles are watching and listening all day every day.
ReadyRosie has some great short videos about building and showing kindness. Each video is less than 2 minutes and provides practical strategies for learning with your child in everyday moments. Explore some of those here:
https://app.readyrosie.com/en/playlists/711904