5 Ways to Raise Kinder Kids
At our summer camp for girls-only and boys-only near Chicago, we try to foster a community where it’s cool to be kinder kids (as opposed to sometimes in the larger community outside camp, where sometimes the prevailing culture is that it’s cool to be cruel.)
Sociologist Christine Carter posted this article, summarized below, (and in full at this link).
Raising Kinder Kids
- Model kindness yourself. Kindness can be contagious: when we see someone else perform an act of kindness, we are more likely to feel an impulse to help out, too. Research suggests that altruistic children have at least one parent (usually of the same sex) who deliberately communicates altruistic values to their kids. Similarly, when preschoolers have nurturing caregivers who deliberately model helping others, they tend to be more helpful and verbally sympathetic to other children when they hurt themselves. There are many ways to model altruism for your kids, as the Half Full reader shows:
- Make kids personally responsible in some way. Four to 13-year-olds who were asked to donate their Halloween candy to hospitalized children donated more (and were more likely to make a donation) when they felt personally responsible.
- Don’t reward helping behavior. Very young children who receive material rewards for helping others become less likely to help in the future compared with toddlers who only receive verbal praise or receive no reward at all.
- Be positive. Parents who express positive feelings and use positive, non-coercive discipline raise children who are kinder and more compassionate toward others.
- Expose them to need. Too often we protect our kids from pain and suffering, and in so doing we shelter them from others’ needs. Consider the counterintuitive notion that compassion is a positive emotion strongly correlated with happiness, and provide them with opportunities to feel compassion.
Do you have further ideas on how to raise kinder kids? Please share in the comments!