Teaching Kindness

Recently there was an article written in the Terre Haute Tribune Star (here) regarding kindness. The author, Mike Lunsford, brought up several excellent points about who is responsible for teaching our children to be kind, and who taught us to be kind. While everyone did not grow up with the same examples of kindness being taught in their homes, in their families, is it safe to assume that kindness is certainly taught, learned, caught, in our families? As parents, is this our responsibility? How about grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc.

Why is being kind an important quality to learn from those you are closest to? We worry that our children have the latest style of clothing, that they excel at sports, and academically. But what if we worried that they weren't being kind enough? What if we made the Golden Rule the rule to live by?

Not that that would be easy, since it would require that we live that way as the parents and other adults in our children's lives. Road rage, nasty treatment of our spouses and our siblings, wait staff. you get the idea, would be out. The thing is, we all want children not to be bully's we want them to feel secure and safe, so that the violence will stop. Why are our children feeling so desperate that being mean or violent is the only answer they seem to be able to come up with? Being kind to each other may not be the answer, but it couldn't hurt could it?

Get up right now, go look in the mirror, and then go and make the world a kinder place, it does start with you, it starts with me. The lessons we teach by showing kindness are not lessons lost, they are lessons caught by the generation that is watching us constantly and learning more by what they see, what we do, than by anything we say.