About the Author:

Kinshoo, just a mom who shares her motherhood journey on her website Mom Learning With Baby where she explains how she involves her child into creative learning and gives easy DIY activities and crafts ideas with kids, along with few Free Printables.

KINDNESS is one quality that seems to be replenishing even faster than the extinction of Dinosaurs. We need to raise a generation that is full of kindness at heart and empathetic nature towards others; the world already has enough hatred.

Points to ponder: 

Is raising more intellectual, tech-savvy, self-centred kids making them more selfish and cut from the roots? 

Are kids becoming more like robots with lesser or zero emotional quotient or attachment to people?

Are their lives revolving around social media pretending to-be what they are not (materialistic and fake attitude)?

We need a generation of kids with high IQ (Intelligent Quotient) and EQ (Emotional Quotient) at the same time. We don’t need robots, we need humans. We have to nurture feelings as well, along with knowledge, skills, reasoning etc. in our children.

Everyone is so engrossed in thinking about themselves and fighting their own survival battle, that none has time to even have empathy towards someone. We just tend to file complaints, to swear someone who commits any mistake, without even realising that the other party might not be at fault totally or might be undergoing some mental trauma. For example:

A waiter drops soup on your expensive designer dress.. woaahh… you would be raging with anger for sure and blast him left-right without even considering once- that he might be not very well in health but still working to earn bread for his dependants; or it might be someone else’s fault who just stumble with him causing him lose his balance.

Only if one takes a little second to take deep breath and try to understand will he realize and handle the whole situation in better way.. but who has the time!!!!

Tips to develop kindness in kids:

1. Communication: Only when we will talk more with kids trying to understand their perplexed minds, we will be able to explain and help them tackle the situations. If we only dictate or order them what-to-do and how-to-do, all the time; they would hardly be able to communicate their hesitations and doubts.
2. Freedom of Expression: We parents often get offended when kids don’t agree to us. But, if we think with cool head, it’s totally fine. They have right to disagree with the parents as well. Like our opinions also differ from those of our parents or others. So our children also have right to dissent from our point to view.
3. Sympathize: Failures and mistakes are part of learning process in life. A child, young or teenager, looks upon his parents for understanding and sympathy. They expect their parents to support them emotionally and boost their morale. If we sympathize towards our kids, then only they will learn to show kindness and sympathy towards others.
4. Leading by Example: Kids learn more from what they see rather than what is told to them. So we need to be super careful and cautious about our behaviour towards our workers, helpers, spouse, parents, siblings and neighbours – actually everyone around. Abusing a helper or cursing a neighbour leaves a bad impression on young minds and they tend to react similarly in such situations; which definitely is not the best way to deal.
5. Motivation with Empathy: All parents love and want to motivate their kids to achieve success and be independent in life, but is our way of encouragement balanced? Or it’s just making them feel competitive without emotions? Healthy competition is a way to progress but just a challenge to win is not very appreciable, rather such kind of thinking makes kids adopt dishonest means to win and tendency to be deceitful. 

Example: When a child falls while running, we encourage him and want him to learn to get up on his own. But are we not hurting his innocent mind by making him feel that his injuries doesn’t matter and only the completion of task or winning is important. So we need to motivate them but with empathy. We should ask the kids whether they are hurt or if it’s paining. Modify statements like-

“I understand you are hurt, but you should be stronger to get up again”

And definitely ask later about the injury (show empathy), so that they realize parent’s intention behind.

Seeing aggressive kids around worries me, how elder kids don’t bother after pushing a smaller kid on playground, children are more self-oriented with sense of materialism and excess amount of “I” in their tone.

INDIFFERENCE is the root cause of apathy and unconcerned attitude towards other’s misery and pain. And such behaviour might be result of experiences faced during childhood. Kids need lot of love, understanding, sympathy, motivation and empathy and of course intelligence, reasoning, skill development, and differentiation between deceptive and unethical ways to achieve goals.

Be Kind!!

Love

Kinshoo