Five tips to educate children in kindness

We all want toThat our children are good, hardworking, smart ... and, above all, that they are happy One of the keys to happiness is not to give many gifts to our offspring, but to educate them well so that they are good people and understand the importance of kindness and empathy.

Empathy, the ability to worry about what happens to others, is essential today and is transmitted by parents. However, an investigation developed at Harvard University (United States) has made it important that children do not "receive" this message from their parents: most believe that their parents will be more proud of them if they get good grades instead of if they help a classmate, for example.


This work has been based on surveys of 10,000 children of the North American country who study in the last years of Primary and the first years of ESO. According to your data, young people today value their personal happiness more because that's how they think their parents do it.

Alert about future generations

With the results of their study, the authors warn that when young people "do not prioritize care for others and justice over aspects of personal success" they end up having "more risks of developing forms of harmful behavior"These harmful behaviors are cruelty, being dishonest and not respecting others, according to the research itself.


Luckily, not everything is lost: in the opinion of the authors of the report, kindness and justice "still count" for young people, parents and teachers as important values. Therefore, they have developed these tips to follow so that today's children are ethical, kind and fair citizens today and when they grow up.

Tips for raising kind children

1.- Practice kindness

As the authors of the research remember, children are not born being good or bad, but the education they receive and practice is what determines how they are educated and, therefore, will be in the future.

For that reason, to be kind they set the example of an instrument: you have to practice to learn to touch it ... and so it is with kindness: you must rehearse every day, either helping a partner with homework, for example.

2.- The two essential skills


In life and in kindness there are two skills that are essential, and that parents should teach our children: the closeness and perspective. Closeness, because we must be attentive to others and be close and concerned about their welfare; and the perspective, because we must be able to see the situation in its totality and, in this way, identify the different ways to confront it.

The authors of the research ensure that if children are able to put themselves in the shoes of others, thinking of different perspectives according to who experiences each situation, they will be developing interest in what happens to others and, therefore, they may be fairer with their surroundings.

3.- Give example

We have repeated them many times: parents must set an example to our children, because the older children who educate children are their role models. Now, as the researchers point out, being a child's model does not mean being perfect nor have the answers to all the questions they can ask us.

Being a role model is "deal with our faults, recognize our mistakes, listen to our children and students and connect our values ​​with their way of seeing the world ", in the words of the authors of the research.

Here they emphasize that not only parents are models, but also teachers. We all must try to be good models and, in turn, put into practice the two perspectives of which we have spoken before: to be understandable, empathetic and fair.

4.- Goodbye to destructive feelings

Anger, envy, fear, shame ... are destructive feelings that nobody escapes: we've all felt them once, but we must learn to control them and make them constructive and teach our children to get it.

5.- Self-criticism

The last advice is as clear as it is simple: do self-criticism. Parents, but also teachers and other educators, we must stop to think what message we are transmitting to our children with our behavior, and if that is the one we want to send them. If not, you have to get down to work to change.

Angela R. Bonachera

Video: Teaching Children Respect in 5 Minutes or Less!


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