RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

As you know, we have been focussing on the Value of Compassion this year here at SOGS.

To help our students understand this value we have been using the value of KINDNESS to help them understand what compassion looks like in action!

We are warmly inviting you to reinforce this at home!

Kindness and generosity are two of the most important qualities a child can develop as they grow. As the adults in their lives, you can guide your children to act on their empathy and show kindness to anyone they meet.

You may like to try, or revisit, some of these tips for teaching your children to be kind.

Discuss What Kindness Means and Looks Like

Even before your children start to actively demonstrate kindness, they can experience empathy. They can begin to feel sorry for someone or notice if another person is being left out or hurt. By reflecting on those feelings with your child, you can guide them to the concepts of empathy, generosity, and kindness in a way that will make sense to them.

These conversations are a great way to introduce the idea of kindness to young kids in their first years at school. It can open up the conversation for everyone in your family or classroom to give their own definition of kindness and talk about the gestures they appreciate. Look for opportunities to notice and highlight people acting with kindness in tv shows, films, news, books and in your own family and use these instances to have a chat! This will allow the children to really understand what kindness looks like, sounds like and feels like.

Use Play Pretend, Games and Stories

You can also teach kindness to children by sparking their imagination with a silly game or an engaging story. Try having a smiling competition to show them just how contagious a bright smile really is, which can teach them this simple expression of kindness.

Or, you can play the compliment game, where your family gathers around in a circle and passes a ball back and forth. The person with the ball must compliment the person they're about to throw to before they toss the ball. Play with them and introduce situations that make them consider how others feel. You might have a doll bump their head and ask the child what they should do to comfort it. You can also pose some hypothetical questions, like how they'd feel about being in a tough situation or how they would want to be treated. This is a good chance to talk about the Golden Rule, “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” as Jesus said!

Be an Example of Kindness

Children are incredibly observant, and they learn a lot about how to treat others by watching the adults in their life. Demonstrate kindness when you are out and about so that you can live by example and have stories to tell the children in your life. You can also show kindness to your own children and talk about how they feel when they receive kindness from others. 

-Make an effort to let people in when you are driving and see how happy it makes you feel!

-Let someone who has less groceries than you go first and experience the feelings of gratitude and appreciation from those people. 

-Use your words and your facial expressions to pass on kindness to others daily. Our eyes are windows to the soul. Are your eyes kind eyes?

Promote Kindness Through Selfless Habits and Experiences

You can encourage children to become experts at showing kindness by helping instill good habits, like using manners, expressing gratitude or compassion, and doing random acts of kindness as a family.

Activities like volunteering or participating in community action will make for a great family bonding experience, as well as a chance to learn.

Help Children Understand That Kindness Isn't Always Easy

As adults, we know that sometimes being nice to someone can be hard, especially if that person hasn't been nice to us. However, one of the best lessons you can teach a child is to do the right thing and show kindness, even when you don't necessarily feel like it. Again, make sure to model that behaviour so children can learn by example. 

Focus on How It Feels to Be Kind

Parents can offer stories from their own lives to demonstrate kindness, generosity, and empathy in the real world. Consider telling your kids of times when you experienced kindness from others or when you were kind to someone else. Focus on how good it made you feel to be the recipient of kindness or how you felt fulfilled from being nice to someone else.

Or, make it a habit to have children reflect after being kind to someone and consider the positive feelings they get when they're kind and generous. This can help them learn to be kind without needing to be rewarded because they will have intrinsic rewards.

Extend Your Kindness to All of Creation

We all know the importance of caring for creation and we can also extend loving kindness to all animals and plants by acting respectfully whenever we are in nature. Be kind by not littering and by recycling correctly. Again, your children see everything you do so let’s continue to prepare them to be the best adults they can be in the future.

Love in action is what Jesus taught us to do

Love is sympathy, empathy, compassion, kindness, respect, care, justice, mercy, patience, understanding ….in action. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are alive in us when we focus on enacting these behaviours. Scripture tells us this over and over.

In Conclusion

These are just some ways to instill kindness and generosity in children so they can have strong and long-lasting relationships with the people in their lives; the world around them and ultimately with our loving God, where all the goodness in the universe comes from!

♥ Prayer of Thanksgiving and Praise to the Sacred Heart ♥

Lord, you deserve all honour and praise, because your love is perfect and your heart is pure.

My heart is filled with gratitudefor the many blessings and graces you have bestowed upon me and those whom I love.

May I always be attentive and never take for granted the gifts of mercy and love that flow so freely and generously from your Sacred Heart.

Help my heart to become more and more like your heart so that it beats with mercy, compassion and love.

Heart of Jesus, I adore you. 

Heart of Jesus, I praise you. 

Heart of Jesus, I thank you. 

Heart of Jesus, I love you forever and always.

Amen.

God bless,

Caith Malone

Faith Life Inquiry Leader