Cultivating Kindness: 10 Ways to Help Your Birdies Learn Kindness
For most people, a new year means a new start. New Year’s Eve is deeply rooted in setting resolutions and goals for the year ahead and while it can be really fun to set New Year's resolutions as a family, it can also be overwhelming. This year, instead of setting a ton of goals and resolutions, we encourage you to just set one goal with your Birdies.
Cultivate Kindness.
You can set a goal to cultivate kindness in your home and community each day, week, and month. This is one of the best ways to give back throughout the year and teach your kids the beauty and importance of kindness.
Today we’re going to share 10 ways to help your Birdies learn kindness this year.
10 Ways to Help Your Birdies Learn Kindness
What is Kindness?
It’s important to start by helping your kids understand what kindness is, and what it means to them. Start talking to them about kindness and point out when something that they’ve done has been kind. One of the best ways to teach kindness to your family is through books.
Our favorites include:
- More than Words: So Many Ways to Say What We Mean
- Kindness Makes Us Strong - by Sophie Beer
- Kindness is my Superpower: A children's Book About Empathy, Kindness and Compassion
- The Boy with Flowers in His Hair
Celebrate Kindness Days
Designate specific ‘Kindness Days’. There are already days throughout the year that are dedicated to ‘kindness’. There is World Kindness Day (November 13) and Random Acts of Kindness Day (February 17), you can start by marking those days off on your calendar and plan a way to truly celebrate those days with your kids.
Create a Kindness Calendar
This goes along with those National Kindness Days! You can sit down together as a family and create a kindness calendar. Print out a monthly calendar and fill it in with your kids. Get really creative with the ways you can practice kindness.
Remember to add simple acts such as setting the table, cheering someone up, or writing a thoughtful or friendly note to someone. It’s important to let your kids come up with ideas that they think would be kind as well.
Be a Model of Kindness
Children are sponges. One of the best ways to teach your Birdies is through leading by example. By doing kind things and sharing kindness in your everyday life, with your kids, they’ll learn from experience. After all, kids are eager to model our behaviors.
Your kids will notice the small things such as putting your phone down and making eye contact for a conversation, or saying thank you every time someone helps you with something. They’ll also notice the bigger things, like inviting a lonely person to dinner, volunteering your time, and donating money.
Donate as a Family
Whether it’s money, time, or old clothes and toys, donating together as a family can be an amazing way to teach kindness to your kids.
You could have each child choose a cause that means something to them and help them donate a portion of their allowance each year. You could spend a Saturday cleaning a local park or grocery shopping for an elderly neighbor. Or you could donate old toys to a local shelter.
Doing these things together as a family will help instill the power of kindness beyond just your family.
Create Kindness Cards
Prepare and print out a variety of flashcards with acts of kindness on them. This can be a great opportunity to correct unkind behaviors that your kids might be practicing. Your child can pick one card to complete at school, on the playground, at a friend's house, and at home.
Examples of these could be inviting someone to play with them at recess, saying ‘thank you’ to their teacher, and helping their younger siblings put their toys away.
Write Thank You Notes
Sit together as a family and write thank you notes. Your kids can write thank you notes to their teachers, friends, and family members. Let them take the lead on writing the notes, but encourage them to be specific and always think of things for each person that they’re writing one for.
Paint Kindness Messages on Rocks
This can be a great activity for kids of all ages! Head outside and find some awesome rocks. Then have the kids paint them in bright colors. Set them aside to dry and then you can write positive affirmations of kindness on them. Let your kids pick the positive kindness affirmation that they want, and let them keep the rock in their room as a reminder to be kind.
A few examples of positive kindness affirmations are:
- I am a kind person.
- I choose to be kind, even when it’s difficult.
- It feels good to put kindness out into the world.
- I am surrounded by kindness.
- In every moment, I choose kind thoughts and actions.
Role Play Kindness Scenarios
Sometimes the best way to teach kindness is by practicing it in action. You can create several scenarios to role-play as a family, to help your child understand how kindness and empathy play into the real world. It can be as simple as asking them what they would do in a specific scenario – like what they would do if a friend was being picked on, or if their friend was being unkind to someone else.
Understand That Kindness Isn’t Always Easy
Kindness isn’t always easy. It can be hard to be generous to a sibling who’s annoying you and it can be scary to stick up for a friend who’s being left out or bullied. All we can do is remind our kids to think about others in all of their actions. Think about how that person must be feeling, and act according to how they’d like to be treated if the roles were reversed.
Kindness is like a muscle, the more you practice kindness, the more second nature it will become. Keep practicing kindness and keep coaching your Birdies on kindness and empathy together.
What’s one way that your family likes to practice kindness and empathy? Come hang out and chat with us over on Instagram. You can find us @birdiebeanbaby.
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