Children are not born bad but they do start out thinking that everything revolves around them, demonstrating an innate selfishness. The capacity to be kind and caring towards others is within them, it just needs to be nurtured and developed.
So how do we, as parents, teach our children to be ‘nice’?
In a 2014 Harvard Graduate School of Education survey of 10,000 students, 80 percent of respondents said that their happiness and personal achievements were more important than caring for others. Fairness also ranked far lower than personal achievement.
“If you are not happy, life is nothing. After that, you want to do well. And after that, expend any excess energy on others,” was the overriding view.
Parents often value their child’s happiness and personal success above their child’s concern for others. Good grades and sporting achievements are celebrated more than altruism and good citizenship. If we want our children to be ‘nice’, we have to look at our own values and what we hold in high esteem.
There’s no avoiding it. If we want to teach our children to be kind, generous, loving, fair, grateful citizens, we have to lead by example. We are their role models, their mentors. Mums and dads need to be helpful and appreciative of each other – not sarcastic and intolerant, taking each other for granted. We need to be friendly neighbours, looking out for others, respectful, generous with our time and resources. Of course, no-one’s perfect; we also need to demonstrate positive ways of dealing with our mistakes – how to apologise and put things right when we mess up.
The more ‘niceness’ is practiced and re-enforced, the more second-nature it becomes.
Chatting about movies, television programs, newspaper articles, books – even what your kids tell you about their peers - offers great opportunities to help your children identify and understand ‘nice’ behaviour:
e.g.
“How would you have handled that situation?”
“How do think she might have felt?”
“Why do you think he reacted like that?”
“Tell me about the new boy – what do you like about him?”
Teasing, put-downs, mocking … all are playground staples. Sticks and stones may break your bones … but words can sting and hurt and scar. Words can cause more damage than a kick in the shins! When teaching kids to be kind, we need to firmly discourage them from belittling others. Of course, this has to start at home. If we are continually making fun of our own children and laughing at their flaws, they will think this is acceptable behaviour.
We all get angry, frustrated, embarrassed or stressed-out from time to time. Children need to be taught how to deal with such strong emotions without taking them out on others.
This might include:
This is not easy for a child – it’s not easy for an adult – so it helps to talk things through with your child and remind them of previous occasions they may have felt this way and how they processed their emotions.
When your little poppets volunteer to help wash the dishes and end up flooding the floor with a tsunami of soap suds, it is too easy to take over the job and not let them near the kitchen again. Similarly, it may be difficult to express gratitude and delight when junior wakes you at 4.30am with a surprise breakfast of cold tea and toast.
Our children’s unprompted attempts at helpfulness or kindness will not always have the desired outcome. There will be many times when they have to go backwards to go forwards. But we need to encourage them and cheer them on … and maybe – ever-so-gently – show how they might do things even better next time around.