Are you raising nice kids? A Harvard psychologist gives 5 ways to raise them to be kind

By Amy Joyce, Washington Post, July 18, 2014

Earlier this year, I wrote about teaching empathy, and whether you are a parent who does so. The idea behind it is from Richard Weissbourd, a Harvard psychologist with the graduate school of education, who runs the Making Caring Common project, aimed to help teach kids to be kind.

I know, you’d think they are or that parents are teaching that themselves, right? Not so, according to a new study released by the group.

About 80 percent of the youth in the study said their parents were more concerned with their achievement or happiness than whether they cared for others. The interviewees were also three times more likely to agree that “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school.”

Weissbourd and his cohorts have come up with recommendations about how to raise children to become caring, respectful and responsible adults. Why is this important? Because if we want our children to be moral people, we have to, well, raise them that way.

“Children are not born simply good or bad and we should never give up on them. They need adults who will help them become caring, respectful, and responsible for their communities at every stage of their childhood,” the researchers write.

The five strategies to raise moral, caring children, according to Making Caring Common:

1. Make caring for others a priority. Why? Parents tend to prioritize their children’s happiness and achievements over their children’s concern for others. But children need to learn to balance their needs with the needs of others, whether it’s passing the ball to a teammate or deciding to stand up for friend who is being bullied.

How? Children need to hear from parents that caring for others is a top priority. A big part of that is holding children to high ethical expectations, such as honoring their commitments, even if it makes them unhappy. For example, before kids quit a sports team, band, or a friendship, we should ask them to consider their obligations to the group or the friend and encourage them to work out problems before quitting.

Try this
• Instead of saying to your kids: “The most important thing is that you’re happy,” say “The most important thing is that you’re kind.”

• Make sure that your older children always address others respectfully, even when they’re tired, distracted, or angry.

• Emphasize caring when you interact with other key adults in your children’s lives. For example, ask teachers whether your children are good community members at school.

2. Provide opportunities for children to practice caring and gratitude. Why? It’s never too late to become a good person, but it won’t happen on its own. Children need to practice caring for others and expressing gratitude for those who care for them and contribute to others’ lives. Studies show that people who are in the habit of expressing gratitude are more likely to be helpful, generous, compassionate, and forgiving—and they’re also more likely to be happy and healthy.

How? Learning to be caring is like learning to play a sport or an instrument. Daily repetition—whether it’s a helping a friend with homework, pitching in around the house, or having a classroom job—make caring second nature and develop and hone youth’s caregiving capacities. Learning gratitude similarly involves regularly practicing it.

Try this
• Don’t reward your child for every act of helpfulness, such as clearing the dinner table. We should expect our kids to help around the house, with siblings, and with neighbors and only reward uncommon acts of kindness.

• Talk to your child about caring and uncaring acts they see on television and about acts of justice and injustice they might witness or hear about in the news.

• Make gratitude a daily ritual at dinnertime, bedtime, in the car, or on the subway. Express thanks for those who contribute to us and others in large and small ways.

3. Expand your child’s circle of concern. Why? Almost all children care about a small circle of their families and friends. Our challenge is help our children learn to care about someone outside that circle, such as the new kid in class, someone who doesn’t speak their language, the school custodian, or someone who lives in a distant country.

How? Children need to learn to zoom in, by listening closely and attending to those in their immediate circle, and to zoom out, by taking in the big picture and considering the many perspectives of the people they interact with daily, including those who are vulnerable. They also need to consider how their decisions, such as quitting a sports team or a band, can ripple out and harm various members of their communities. Especially in our more global world, children need to develop concern for people who live in very different cultures and communities than their own.

Try this
• Make sure your children are friendly and grateful with all the people in their daily lives, such as a bus driver or a waitress.

• Encourage children to care for those who are vulnerable. Give children some simple ideas for stepping into the “caring and courage zone,” like comforting a classmate who was teased.

• Use a newspaper or TV story to encourage your child to think about hardships faced by children in another country.

4. Be a strong moral role model and mentor. Why? Children learn ethical values by watching the actions of adults they respect. They also learn values by thinking through ethical dilemmas with adults, e.g. “Should I invite a new neighbor to my birthday party when my best friend doesn’t like her?”

How? Being a moral role model and mentor means that we need to practice honesty, fairness, and caring ourselves. But it doesn’t mean being perfect all the time. For our children to respect and trust us, we need to acknowledge our mistakes and flaws. We also need to respect children’s thinking and listen to their perspectives, demonstrating to them how we want them to engage others.

Try this:
• Model caring for others by doing community service at least once a month. Even better, do this service with your child.

• Give your child an ethical dilemma at dinner or ask your child about dilemmas they’ve faced.

5. Guide children in managing destructive feelings. Why? Often the ability to care for others is overwhelmed by anger, shame, envy, or other negative feelings.

How? We need to teach children that all feelings are okay, but some ways of dealing with them are not helpful. Children need our help learning to cope with these feelings in productive ways.

Try this
Here’s a simple way to teach your kids to calm down: ask your child to stop, take a deep breath through the nose and exhale through the mouth, and count to five. Practice when your child is calm. Then, when you see her getting upset, remind her about the steps and do them with her. After a while she’ll start to do it on her own so that she can express her feelings in a helpful and appropriate way.

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George Saunders Convocation Speech - Kindness

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Your Kindness Is Good for You

By Casey N. Cep, Pacific Standard, March 19, 2014

Years ago, when I was not yet a teenager, my father nearly died. He had a series of heart attacks, but then a triple bypass saved his life. There is so much to say about the weeks he spent in the hospital and the months he spent in recovery, as well as the miracles of medicine and the mysteries of the human body, but I want to say something about when his failing heart first shot pains through his left arm.

It was early in the morning, but he knew exactly what was happening in his chest and woke my mother to ask her to call an ambulance. Our telephone was in the living room, but before she could leave their bedroom to use it, he asked for something else. My father asked that the ambulance not use its siren.

Weeks later, when the fear of death had receded like some strange tide, my mother asked him about the siren. My father said simply that he worried it would have woken and frightened his three sleeping daughters. It is true that we were all light sleepers and that our farm was usually blanketed by the polite silence that comes from having no close neighbors, but what impossible kindness there was in my father’s request.

Kindness is not always as heavy as action: it can be as light as speech or as invisible as inaction.

I have called it an act of kindness, which I think it was. It was considerate in a way I cannot begin to understand; generous in a way no one would expect, much less demand. Years later I still do not comprehend how in what very well might have been the final moments of his life, my father thought to ask for quiet so that his daughters might continue sleeping.

KINDNESS IS LIKE HOLDING an ice cube in your hands. It stings, but then the cold dissolves; what at first you could barely hold becomes something you cannot let go. My father’s request for a quiet ambulance came from a man so familiar with kindness that the sting was completely gone: the ice was no longer cold, but one with the flesh.

But how do we cultivate such kindness, learning to hold the ice in our hands? While the science of happiness may be the most popular these days, it is closely related to the science of kindness. Take Stephen G. Post’s 2005 survey “Altruism, Happiness, and Health: It’s Good to Be Good,” where he gathers a fascinating set of studies that show in various ways how altruism makes us not only happier, but healthier.

Post cites two studies that “confirm an association between altruistic activities and both well-being and life satisfaction in older adults”; another that links volunteerism to lower levels of depressive symptoms and higher levels of well-being; and two others that found moderate amounts of volunteerism were associated with lowered risk of death (even after controlling for variables like age, gender, chronic conditions, exercise, health habits like smoking, and marital status).

Post writes “that altruism is one of the factors that increases the odds of well-being, better health, or survival in many people,” though cautions, “it is no guarantee of good health.” The overall explanation for why altruism influences health so positively, Post states, is “that emotional states of unselfish love and kindness displace negative emotional states (e.g. rage, hatred, fear), which cause stress and stress-related illness through adverse impact on immune function.”

Post suggests that generous behaviors not only be taught in schools, but also prescribed by doctors in the interest of public health. In that way, whatever natural inclination we may have toward kindness might be nurtured and enhanced. But why wait for a prescription? Self-examination may be all we need.

CONSIDER GEORGE SAUNDERS’ CONVOCATION speech last year at Syracuse University when the celebrated author said clearly, “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” Saunders leads by negative example, revisiting missed opportunities for kindness, including one powerful memory from the seventh grade when he was nice, but not kind to a new girl who was “mostly ignored, occasionally teased.” It is, of course, easy for all of us to remember such examples from our own lives.

But kindness is not always as heavy as action: it can be as light as speech or as invisible as inaction. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to exercise self-restraint: not posting a nasty comment on an article, leaving a mean-spirited tweet in the draft folder, keeping quiet to listen to whatever unfamiliar or opposing opinion is being offered.

The Internet has offered us many facile ways of expressing approval (like, favorite, share) but few ways of being kind. It might be that the greatest act of kindness on the Internet is to be quiet. Not to be forever silent, but at least listen and learn before expressing outrage or anger, and to realize that kindness will not always take the form of approval. My father’s quiet ambulance was one act of kindness, but so too was rebuking me not long after when I fought with one of his hospital nurses about visiting hours.

It was kind to confront me with my own failure of kindness. George Saunders advised the graduates at Syracuse to reflect on their own balance of succeeding and failing to be kind: “in your life,” he said, “there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter.”

Revisiting failure of any kind is chastening. But when it comes to kindness, such reflection can, as Saunders suggests, teach us about our own inclinations. A prescription to perform acts of kindness may seem like a silly thing, but perhaps simply revisiting our successes and failures is enough.

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How Do You Leave People?

A compilation

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When we leave, people are left either …

- energized or depleted
- encouraged or discouraged
- inspired to tackle the next challenge or wanting to quit

How do you leave people?—Michael Hyatt1

*

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
That my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me
That every soul I come in contact with
May feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
So to shine as to be a light to others;
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine;
It will be You, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example,
By the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,
The evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.
—John Henry Cardinal Newman

*

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.—Maya Angelou

*

The greatest gift that we can give one another is rapt attention to one another’s existence.—Sue Archley Ebaugh

*

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.—Henry James

*

It is often the small kindnesses—the smiles, gestures, compliments, favors—that make our day and can even change our lives.—Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval2

*

Kind words do not cost much. They never blister the tongue or lips. They make other people good-natured. They also produce their own image on men's souls, and a beautiful image it is.—Blaise Pascal

*

We are insecure, all of us, from the deaf janitor to the rock-jawed football coach. Frequently, the brighter a person’s veneer of success and confidence, the more ravenous his hunger for affirmation. Pull back the orange peel just a bit and you will find that each woman and man, no matter how polished or praised, is deep down a little girl longing to know that she is beautiful or worthy, or a little boy eager to hear that he is handsome or capable.

Of course, this need can be manipulated. Frequently it is. Feigned attentiveness can be an assassin’s dagger in the hands of ambitious ladder-climbers, sexual predators, and other charlatans. Sincere attentiveness is another path altogether. It conveys genuine respect, concern, and value more than any other communication decision. When a person receives another’s whole-hearted attention, suddenly they matter; they have worth. In a very real sense, at that moment, they feel they have been brought into existence.

That is why people respond to attentiveness almost as if to magic. It is a kiss that really does transform frogs into princes and princesses—changing behavior, opening hearts, and inspiring loyalty.

Most of us imagine ourselves to be good listeners. Question yourself. Do others come out of interactions with you feeling that you really sought to hear them and draw them out?

Remember: You have a desperately needed gift to offer through attentiveness. Many are grasping for it. Even to the confident and secure, it will be a prized blessing.—Jedd Medefind and Erik Lokkesmoe3

*

Everyone is hungry for praise and starving for honest appreciation. We all need the encouragement of others, and yet most of us fail all too often to express appreciation or comfort to those around us.

“Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”4 We need to learn to apply that to those around us and try to remind ourselves constantly to think about and praise them for their good qualities, the good things.—Maria Fontaine5

*

Most of us don’t mean to be inconsiderate. We’re just so busy starring in our own movie that we forget that everyone else is starring in theirs. That’s why it’s extremely important to see yourself as others do—as the supporting actor in their movie. So do an inventory of all the people in your life, and ask yourself what kind of character you’d play in their movie. Are you the loving, doting grown daughter or the distracted, absentee one? The sweet, supportive boyfriend or the needy, selfish one? The office troubleshooter or the drama queen? For each relationship, write down five ways that you can make your “character” more sympathetic.—Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval6

*

The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought to other people’s lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.—Rabbi Harold Kushner

*

People pass under the window of your life every day. Has your love found a way to help them?—David Brandt Berg7

*

We remain a nonentity, no being, nothing, timeless, spaceless, emotionless, complete ineffectiveness until loved.

Then somebody comes along and the world begins. I begin.

For I realize that I’m not just a figment of my own imagination. Only when I see the glow in another’s eyes do I know that I’m on fire. Only when I see the explosion in another’s life do I see my own power.

Then and only then can I say, “How about that! How about me!”

So often we spin our virtues, qualities, talents. We spin our usness about us and around and around we go, peeping out now and then. Kind of confused and afraid because we’re not sure of what we’re doing. We can’t see any reflection of usness in somebody else.

Then the shell is cracked, and somebody peeks in and says, “Hi.” And then it’s all real because somebody else has it.

Suddenly usness exists outside the shell, outside us. There it is: We can see it, feel its power, watch its influence. And it’s great looking at us from the outside.

What do you do? Do you laugh or cry or sing or shake hands with you?

Do you hug this blessed event or just walk around shaking your head?

You do all this and much more until the thought hits you—that’s why Jesus is my brother and Lord! Because He loves me.

A just here me.

A just physical-matter me or even an animated-matter me is a not-much me.

But when He peeks in and says “Hi,”

When He takes this “usness,” examines it, really looks it over, and says, “I love you”

Then I have real-life existing me.

Then I have time,

Then I have space,

Then I’m alive (if you want—kicking).

That’s why God said, “You will be My people, My bride, My vineyard, the apple of My eye.”

When He loved us, we began to exist as new creations as persons, not as things.

The Gospel says: “You are to be like your brother Jesus.” Well then,

Go love someone.

Go create someone.

Go make someone come alive.

Let them see their usness in you.—Sister Robin Stratton8

*

God is our sun; we are His moon. We merely reflect His light. And when should we reflect His light the most? When does the moon shine brightest?—At night, when the sun is out of sight. As the world slips deeper and deeper into spiritual darkness, so we must keep on shining and lighting the world with His reflected light.

We are also like the sun’s rays. Each of us who has received Jesus as our Savior is like a sunbeam, a little ray of sunshine coming from the Lord. Each of us has become part of His light and part of His power, spiritually.

The Bible tells us that God is also love.9 Love is the power and light of God. So when you give God’s love to people, you’re showing them His light.—David Brandt Berg10

*

If you will shine His light on people, He’ll do all the rest. He’ll cause it to accomplish His purpose in their lives and hearts and minds.—David Brandt Berg11

Published on Anchor March 2013. Read by Jon Marc.
Music by Michael Dooley.


1 http://michaelhyatt.com/how-are-people-left.html.

2 The Power of Nice (New York: Doubleday, 2006).

3 The Revolutionary Communicator (Relevant Books, 2004).

4 Philippians 4:8 NKJV.

5 Love’s Many Faces (Aurora Production, 2010).

6 The Power of Nice (New York: Doubleday, 2006).

7 Ambassadors of Love (Aurora Production, 2007).

8 Brennan Manning, Souvenirs of Solitude (NavPress, 2009).

9 1 John 4:8.

10 More Like Jesus (Aurora Production, 2001).

11 Ambassadors of Love (Aurora Production, 2007).

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