Kindness is powerful in lifting ourselves and others and creating the biology of happiness. But is kindness something we can “teach” our kids? Like anything else, we can’t force our kids to be kind, but we can do things to help children develop empathy and experience themselves the power of kindness. This episode will explore some ways we can help our children develop the skill of kindness. It will also address using our experience abroad to help toward developing children’s kindness.
One this episode you’ll learn:
You can download a free calendar with prompts for daily kindness from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.
https://assets.randomactsofkindness.org/calendars/neighborhood/2021/2021_RAK_kindness_calendars.pdf
Free Mini-Coaching Session
Sign-up for a free 30-min. mini-coaching session. It can help make a struggling marriage better, and good marriage amazing.
Schedule
One-Minute Wisdom
Each week I carefully craft a short perspective shift or tool that you can read in about a minute or two. You can sign up here.
Follow me on Instagram: @theexpatmomcoach
Kindness is powerful in lifting ourselves and others and creating the biology of happiness. But is kindness something we can “teach” our kids? Like anything else, we can’t force our kids to be kind, but we can do things to help children develop empathy and experience themselves the power of kindness. This episode will explore some ways we can help our children develop the skill of kindness. It will also address using our experience abroad to help toward developing children’s kindness.
One this episode you’ll learn:
You can download a free calendar with prompts for daily kindness from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation.
https://assets.randomactsofkindness.org/calendars/neighborhood/2021/2021_RAK_kindness_calendars.pdf
Free Mini-Coaching Session
Sign-up for a free 30-min. mini-coaching session. It can help make a struggling marriage better, and good marriage amazing.
Schedule
One-Minute Wisdom
Each week I carefully craft a short perspective shift or tool that you can read in about a minute or two. You can sign up here.
Follow me on Instagram: @theexpatmomcoach
Ep. 58. How to help your children be more kind
Welcome back to the podcast. This month we are talking about kindness and today our topic is specifically how to help your child be more kind and think outside of themselves.
Introduction:
One of the sweetest moments as a mother is to watch your child independently choose to be kind. One day, I went on a school field trip with my pre-teen to the aquarium. When I arrived my daughter had a friend with her. The friend didn’t speak English and my daughter knew she felt intimidated by the assignment of identifying things in the museum with her limited language abilities. My daughter thoughtfully linked arms with her and helped her the entire field trip. The little girl’s face went form worried-to-excited as the field trip went on. I was so touched by her thoughtfulness and kindness.
But there have also been moments when I have seen my kids be the opposite of kind—they’ve taken things from each other, yelled rude comments, judged other people, refused to share and the list goes on. As parents, we recognize the power of kindness, but teaching our kids “how” to be kind can be challenging. This week I’m going to offer some actionable steps we can use to help our kids be kinder.
One Minute Wisdom
Before we start, I want to tell you about a free resource I offer to moms. I know you’re busy and time is limited. But, I also know most moms want to feel less overwhelmed and more calm. They want their kids to be emotionally well. I decided a free resource for moms that is designed to be read in about one minute. Each week aI carefully craft a short tool or perspective to give moms something they can try at home with their families that week to improve their families emotional health. One mom shared that she was struggling with her sense of identity and purpose after moving to a new country. She had left behind a career and friends and found herself unsure of how to find purpose as a trailing spouse. She found validation and shifts in perspective in the One-Minute-Wisdom emails and podcasts on the topic of “Finding Your Purpose” and “Reinventing Your Identity.” These perspective shifts have helped to change the way she sees herself and her purpose. You can sign up for One Mintue Wisdom in the show notes, or on my website at theexpatmom.com. And, if a One minute wisdom or podcast episode has helped you or your family, I’d love you to share with me in the review section of the podcast or you can direct message me on instagram @theexpatmomcoach. I’d love to hear your experience!
Let’s jump into our topic! I’d like to share 3 ways we can help our children be kinder.
Help children learn to recognize others emotions. (As reading books, watching movies, people watching)
The predecessor to kindness is empathy. While some children naturally have more empathy than others, empathy is a skill that we can develop.
Children are good at mirroring emotions. In studies they find that children’s faces often follow the emotions of what characters on TV or in books are experiencing.
However some children don’t naturally connect their feeling with what the other person is feeling and they may need help connecting the dots. Other children may recognize what they are feeling, but not know how to articulate it. And still others may choose not to act on that empathy.
As parents we can do a few simple things to encourage the development of empathy. For example, we can help children notice other’s emotions and help connect those emotions to behavior or circumstances, so our children learn more about the emotional landscape of others and how different things are likely to affect people.
In order to cultivate this skill with young children, I love to play this game with younger children as we read or watch a show together. I might ask my little one, “How do you think that character is feeling right now? What do you think they are feeling right now?”
With older kids I find questions in the midst of normal conversation can be useful. For example if my daughter is telling me about how mean a friend is, I try to listen and understand my daugther’s perspective. I try to validate and let her know I understand her perspective. However, I might also ask, “What do you think your friend is feeling?” “Why do you think they might be doing that?” Sometimes these questions help a child see the situation from a friend’s perspective.
It may sound simple, but just the act of helping children be aware of other emotions can be an important way of helping them develop empathy.
Point out how their behavior affects others and themselves—both positively and negatively
Kids don’t always connect the dots about their behavior and how someone else is feeling. As parents we can help train kids to see the connection by pointing it out. Now, on this podcast I advocate for personal responsibility in our emotions. So we don’t want to go around teaching children that they create emotions for others. We are all responsible for our own emotions. However, we can help them see how our actions tend to affect others in order to help them choose behaviors that are more likely to help, not hurt others. This is a delicate tool because we also don’t want to shame our children. So the tone used with this tool is important.
The other day one of my girls was rushing and bumped into her sister. It knocked the sister and caused her to cry. I assumed my daughter would turn around and apologize and ask if she was okay. But she didn’t. I asked her to come back. “Hey, look at _____’s face. How do you think they are feeling? How do you think your behavior might have impacted her?” I could tell she wasn’t very excited about this, but ask she looked at her sister’s face, her heart softened a bit and she apologize.
Sometimes our kids do recognize the impact their behavior has on others, however it’s too inconvenient or difficult to deal with—so it’s easier to just ignore it. This exercise can also help children recognize the important of owning up to our behavior. Responsibility and follow through are important parts of kindness. In addition it allows children to stop and take inventory of how THEY feel after an exchange.
This technique works for pointing out positive things too. When you child does something kind, we can help point out the impact it made on the person. The other day one of my daugthers was reading to her little sister. I said, “Oh honey! Thank you for reading to your sister. Look at the expression on her face. She looks so happy, that must make you feel so good!”
It seems intuitive, but emotional awareness is a skill we cultivate. Verbalizing the impact a child made on someone else helps them recognize their own impact. In addition to helping a child recognize their impact on others, we can also help them realize the impact of their own kindness on themselves. We can either point it out, or ask, “How are YOU feeling right now?”
I recently challenged my kids to try to do one nice thing each day and report back about it at dinner. My teen told me later she thought that seemed like a lot of nice things—7 things a wekk!. But as we were walking into Walmart the other day we saw an older man who had dropped some strawberries and was having a difficult time picking them up. We stopped for a minute to help. Then as we stood up to go a woman was pushing a shopping cart with her toddler in it. She couldn’t get her cart over the door threshold and we helped lift it over. Both little acts took less than 30 seconds. My daugther turned to me and said, “Wow, that was a lot easier than I thought to do something nice.” That’s so true I said. It feels so good too. Did you see that man’s face when helped him? Helping people always makes me feel a bit lighter. She agreed.
This wasn’t any formal lesson, it was just using normal opportunities to build kindness and empathy skills.
Help children to experience the joys of serving others
Use opportunities around you. If you can’t find any, create them.
-(Christmas tree with money wrapped on it, anonymously given to a family who was having a difficult year financially)
This includes supporting kids in the way they try to be kind. The ways they choose to help others might not be the way we would think of or choose and it may be inconvenient. But when we try to say yes instead of no, it allows children to experience the joy of kindness.
This summer when we were traveling my daughter saw a homeless man. Ever since living in Hawaii when we saw a lot of homeless people and sometimes stopped to give them things, my daugther has a big heart for helping when she can. As we were walking, my daugther asked if we could give some money to the man. I checked and didn’t have any cash with me. When we got back to the car a few minutes later, she asked again. She said she wanted to take $5 form her allowance and walk back the 1/2 mile to give it to the man. I was so touched that it was that important to her. Honestly, we needed to go, but I didn’t want to squelch her generosity so I walked back with her to find the man and give him the money.
Allowing children to follow through on their own initiatives to be kind can help fan the flame of empathy as part of their identity.
Service Abroad
There are so many opportunities all around to help others and show kindness. As expats living in foreign countries, we are often especially lucky to serve in our communities. Expat children can easily experience life in an expat bubble going to private schools, associating with wealthy locals and other privileged expats. However, if we are willing to go outside our expat bubble there are often many ways to serve and get our kids involved.
Sometimes the most impactful service may not be with an organization—it may be having a new family over for dinner or games. It may be playing with a child on the playground who hasn’t found a group of friends yet. We can teach our children to look for others we can lift.
Our family had the wonderful opportunity in one of our posts to become friends with some immigrants from another country who were barely making it financially. They were living away from their families and often had to work long hours. They became wonderful friends. We enjoyed lots of meals with them. My daughter even interviewed her about her immigration experiences. They made us food and we sang together. This friendship started with a simple act of kindness and it has blessed all of us.
In addition to small kindness, living abroad there are often many organization, non-profits or other groups you can serve with. When I lived in Beijing, I was able to go with a group of women to the local orphanage to help children and hold babies who had been abandoned by their families due to their gender or because of disabilities.
In Mexico, we were able to help paint a shelter for homeless girls. My girls also selected several barbies and toys to take to an orphanage and give to the children there. They had a wonderful experience playing with the children and seeing them enjoy the toys.
In China, we started a Days for Girls group. Days for girls is a non-profit organization that helps girls in developing countries gain access to reusable menstrual kits so they don’t have to stay home and bleed on cardboard or use unsanitary old rags and leaves.
It was a bit of an intimidating project at first. I went and was mentored by another woman about how to sew the kits and how to run the group. I went with another woman who was an expert at the fabric market to find the right fabrics. I ordered sewing machines and the correct equipment and created all the stations. I made a flyer and sent it out to our embassy group, our neighborhood and our church group. I was floored at how many people responded—so many women said they were wanting an opportunity to serve. We met once a month and sewed the kits. There was a huge learning curve, but we ended up putting in over 700 hours of time and sewed 120 kits for girls. We were able to deliver them to India and to Kenya.
It was an incredible experience to deliver the kits. We worked with local schools and organizations to determine the most culturally appropriate way to discuss menstrual hygeine with girls. In India people do NOT talk about their periods. We asked our driver what his wife of 35 years did for menstrual hygiene and he didn’t know, they had never talked about it.
So, being culturally sensitive, we delivered the kits to an orphanage in New Delhi. We talked with the girls about normal development and about our cycle. In developing countries, sometimes girls don’t know about their periods and they are surprised when it comes. They think they are sick or dying. In addition, many cultures stigmatize girls on their period. In Nepal, some girls have to stay in a hut outside during their period.
So part of the service is to And, sadly many girls miss school during their periods since they don’t have adequate ways to manage their flow. We talk to girls about how to count to anticipate their periods, about how beautiful and amazing the female body is. We talk about how to use the kits and how to wash and care for them. We also do teaching about avoiding human trafficking and self defense as many of these girls are highly vulnerable to mistreatment sexually.
One of my favorite moments in India was when we had the girls shout, “I am strong, I am beautiful.” I’m going to play the clip for you.
I almost get teary listening to those girls. It was an incredible experience—it changed both me and my girls. Living abroad we have unique opportunities to help our children think outside themselves and contribute to the communities they live in and others who need help. But sometimes it does require a mom who is willing to look for or create opportunities to help their children experience the power of kindness.
Summary:
We discussed three ways we can help our children be kinder.
1. Help children learn to recognize others emotions.
2. Point out how their behavior affects others and themselves—both positively and negatively
3. Help children to experience the joys of serving others
In particular we discussed the unique opportunities living and serving abroad offers kids.
Expat Exit Strategy:
Think about your family and where you live. How could you help your family experience the joys of kindness? Make a plan and do it.
Coaching:
Navigating life and mothering abroad is exciting, exhausting and overwhelming at times. I have been there and I get it! I’d love to help you feel less overwhelm. Jump on and schedule a free, 30 mini-coaching session and bring any topic you’d like help with. I’ll talk to you next week.
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