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Most parents rank kindness and emotional intelligence among their highest priorities when raising their children. But what does that look like in real life? We can remind them to “be kind” as much as we want, but children are learning the world around them on an almost minute-by-minute basis, so they require a lot more guidance than just a reminder telling them to be kind. Here are 3 ways to help you start reinforcing kindness and emotional intelligence with your kids (even your teens).
1. Ask your child what kindness means to them. This may seem obvious, but how many of us have asked our kids this question? By asking, we are encouraging them to look inward. Even if the answer is “I don’t know,” that’s a great place to start. Recently, asked my son this question, and he said that kindness to him was helping someone who had fallen on the playground. Then we discussed why it was kind and some other ways he could show kindness. Part of that conversation was asking him why certain things would feel kind to someone else, which allowed him to think from someone else's perspective, which encourages empathy, another sign of emotional intelligence.
2. Avoid shaming them for getting it wrong. Behavior is communication. When children do or say the wrong thing, they need support. Children often know when they have said or done something they shouldn’t, so it’s not a question of knowing right from wrong. Instead, you can provide support by not reacting to the surface behavior and getting curious about
them instead. Once we know what is going on, we can uncover the need or skill they are lacking. If a child lashes out with hurtful words when upset, they lack the essential skills for expressing themselves effectively, and their brains haven’t yet connected their impulses to their behavior. What will help them is talking with them about how they felt when they reacted and offering guidance on better choices to make when up against similar situations. This helps them put together the emotional side of their brain with the logical side. This is called “integration” and begins to happen around age 7 at the earliest for most kids. But you can begin practicing this earlier than that.
3. Practice what you preach. The biggest predictor of a child’s future behavior is determined by their parent's behavior. By modeling kindness and emotional intelligence, you’ll be helping your child learn most powerfully. Talk to them about your feelings, difficult situations, and how you worked through them. This invites your children into your world and is a great way for them to connect to these lessons outside their world. Give them opportunities to display kindness in simple ways around the house, at school, or with friends and family. All these little moments add up to big lessons your kids will take with them into adulthood.
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