Wellbeing

World Kindness Day

World Kindness Day will be celebrated around the world on November 13, 2024. It was first introduced in 1998 by the World Kindness Movement, World Kindness Day offers an opportunity to highlight good deeds in the community and the common thread of kindness.  

 It is observed in many countries, including Canada, Australia, Singapore, Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. 

"Make Kindness the Norm." 

Practice random acts of kindness. It's a perfect way to promote making kindness something students practice every day, rather than on particular days of the year.

National Kindness Day

“Say ‘please’.”

“Give Johnny a turn with the ball.”

“Go say sorry to Mia right now!”

“What’s the magic word?”

“Now say ‘Thank you, Miss Kelly’.”

We want to raise our children to be kind, compassionate, and thoughtful. But if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a scripted apology or a forced ‘thank you’, you know that having kids parrot back polite words doesn’t quite cut it. If we want to raise children who are genuinely kind, we need to realise that micromanaging our kids’ interactions isn’t the right way to encourage moral behaviour. Instead, we need to take a holistic approach: one that encourages discussion, role modelling, and highlighting opportunities for kindness.

As Mr Rogers taught, “Like many other values our children get from us, compassion is more likely to be caught than taught.”

Please and thank you

Politeness and compassion are different, though related, aspects of a bigger personality trait called ‘agreeableness’. Politeness refers to being respectful, having good manners, and abiding by the rules of society. It’s definitely something we want to encourage in our kids, but if we want them to internalise politeness, we need to go beyond just reminding them to say “please” and “thank you”.

Discuss and reflect on moments when you noticed your child speaking politely. It doesn’t need to be a big deal, just simply observe what you saw. “I noticed you saying please when you wanted your sister to share her snacks. I wonder if speaking to her so politely helped her want to share.”

Role model politeness, especially to people who are serving you – such as retail staff and waiters.

Highlight opportunities by reminding them well in advance to speak politely. For example, if it’s your child’s first time buying something at the shop or booking their own doctors’ appointment, you can role play what to say, which includes saying “please” and “thank you”.

Saying sorry

Very few social interactions between kids occur without someone getting hurt, either physically or emotionally. When things go wrong, kind kids don’t just say sorry, they are sorry. Being able to emotionally understand what another person feels is called empathy, a skill which can be strengthened with practice.

Discuss what others may be feeling, using books as a springboard. How are the characters feeling? Why are they feeling that way?

Role model empathy, by allowing them to experience the type of emotional understanding that you want them to demonstrate. This looks like taking time to understand their feelings, even when they’re upset or excited about things that seem trivial.

Highlight opportunities to respond empathetically. For example, if their little sister is crying, nudge them towards offering her a hug or a kind word.

Spontaneous kindness

In my opinion, one of the proudest moments we can experience as parents is when we see our children treating others kindly through their own initiative. When our kids are the ones mowing the lawn of the elderly neighbours, or letting the youngest kid on the team have a shot at the goal, or splitting their donut in half to share with their baby brother… these are the moments that fill our hearts. How do we raise kids who are kind without prodding?

• Discuss what it means to be kind, and do it frequently and informally, like on car rides or around the dinner table. You could ask them how they feel when someone is kind to them, and how they feel when they are kind to others.
• Role model acts of kindness, such as taking a meal to a friend who is sick.
• Highlighting opportunities to join you in acts of kindness, or to plan their own experiences. You could let them know that you will be visiting someone at the nursing home and that you would love them to join you. Or maybe you can let them know that you are baking cookies as a gift for their teacher and ask them if they would like to make something too.

Raising kind kids isn’t something we accomplish in a day. Much like becoming a firefighter, or a doctor, or a neuroscientist, becoming kind takes time, practice, and mentoring.

“In a world where you can be anything, be kind”

Teaching kids to be kind

Teaching kids to be kind

Judgement and criticism are the stock in trade for many people in today’s fast-paced world. In our playgrounds and parks, children often act cruelly – or are simply uninterested in how other people feel. Little kids, big kids, and even adults can respond reactively and unthinkingly, or sometimes intentionally, with unkindness.

Although being unkind is nothing new (it’s happened from the beginning of humanity), technology is enabling cruelty in faster, easier, anonymous ways. Technology is also making it hard for our kids to develop skills to delay gratification. Exercising impulse control – self regulation – is trickier because waiting isn’t needed. These things combine to make it increasingly hard to be a compassionate and kind person, someone who considers the needs of others rather than acting out of self-interest. It demands intention and commitment.

The helper’s high

Our brains release “feelgood” chemicals (like oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins) which fight stress and make us feel happy when we engage in, or even witness, acts of kindness. It’s called the “helper’s high” and it’s our brains’ way of rewarding us for doing good, making us want to repeat the behaviour to get the same good feeling again. Not only does being kind feel good, but it generally keeps us safe because it makes us more likely to be accepted by social  groups. It builds social capital when we are considerate of the needs of others.

Create opportunities for kindness

Even though they are hardwired for kindness we still need to create opportunities for our kids to engage in acts of kindness. We also need them to know what it feels like to have someone treat them kindly (so they know what behaviours to copy, and why kindness is important). So how can you help them?

Model kindness

Show your children how you treat others kindly. Hold open doors for people, put trolleys back that are in the middle of the car park, drop a meal to a sick family member, donate old towels to an animal shelter, let someone in when traffic is heavy.

They don’t have to be grand gestures, just small and gentle ways of considering the needs of others.

Use kind language

Consider how you speak to your child and what you say when you speak. Ask how you speak about others (and yourself). Our kids use our behaviour as templates for how they should act. So let them see your compassion shine through for those around you. Be kind as you listen. Be kind as you talk. Say kind things.

Encourage helping

Is one child great at maths and their younger sibling isn’t? Invite them to teach them or guide them through their homework. Ask them to show you how to play their favourite video game. If they are great at cooking, ask them to help you prepare dinner. Having them involved in prosocial ways gives them a helper’s high.

Build their emotional intelligence

Kids who struggle to regulate and manage their emotions will find it harder to treat others with compassion. An essential part of teaching kids to be kind centres on teaching them to manage challenging emotions, and giving them coping strategies to navigate their way through.

• Teach them the words for feelings. Without the right words to share how they feel it can leave kids confused, fearful and frustrated…which only serves to make their big feelings more intense. When you see them experiencing a feeling, name it for them: “I can see that made you so mad”, “I wonder if you felt sad when your friend left you out”.
• Help them identify when they are escalating, but don’t try and reason with them when they are in the “red zone” – we cannot reason with them at this stage as they are in the emotional part of the brain (mid brain) not the part that lets them be logical (pre-frontal cortex). Discuss strategies and practice when they feel calm. Get them doing things like squeezing play dough, talking about how they feel, going for a run, switching on music that makes them feel good, drawing or writing stuff down.

When you do this, you’re being kind, teaching kindness, and helping them be kind to themselves.

In closing

Encouraging kids to be kind is essential in helping them avoid seeking instant gratification, ego-centric solutions, or being cruel. When people are empathic and kind they are more likely to experience better overall wellbeing, this is in part due to the helper’s high, but also because they feel fulfilled and tend to have better quality relationships. Kindness is cool!

Both of these articles were written by Dr Justin Coulson - Happy Families