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Thursday, March 23, 2017

Kindness Assessment for Parents

Do you value kindness and compassion in your children?  Do you hope your children will be kind to their peers?  We all want this for our kids, but it’s worth looking deeper into the why.

In education we commonly use terms like hard skills and soft skills.  If you have followed my blog you’ve seen me use this terminology before.  Hard skills are things that produce a visible result. Soft skills usually involve characteristics that are formed within us and are more difficult to see, teach, and assess.  This conversation has been going on among educators for a while because schools tend to be really good and focused on the hard skills while we are less effective in teaching the soft skills.


Why does this matter?
I wonder if this same struggle plays out in parenting.  Are we as parents really good at focusing on hard skills and less intentional when it comes to the soft skills.  Here.  Give these questions some self-reflection.


  1. Do I intentionally praise my child for being kind and compassionate?
  2. Do I directly talk to my child about kindness and compassion and what these traits look like?
  3. Go check your Facebook feed.  When is the last time you praised your child on a social media platform for a soft skill like kindness and/or compassion?
  4. Do you find in your Facebook feed a significant amount of praise for hard skills? ie: sports, academics, etc.
  5. When you have the opportunity to publicly praise your child, do you focus on hard or soft skills?

In my experience we spend a lot of time praising our kids for sports and events they participate in and a lot less time praising them for character traits like kindness and compassion.  We tend to praise scoring points over helping an opponent up on the court after they had fallen. If we are not careful we will raise up some very talented kids who are lacking some very important character traits.  Not because we wanted to, but because we didn’t even realize what we were doing.

Recently an old blog post has resurfaced on Facebook called, The Day I Decided My Daughter Will Not Choose Her Own Friends by Leslie Blanchard.  She has some great advice for all of us as parents,

“We would serve our children well, in my opinion, if we had a frank conversation with them about what motivates human beings to accept and reject others.” Leslie goes on to say, “It’s simply not enough to instruct your children to “Be Nice!” You’ve got to be more specific than that.  Kids think if they aren’t being outright unkind, they are being nice.  We know better.  Connect the ugly dots.  Explain the social survival instinct that’s often motivating and guiding their impulses.  I promise you, they can handle it.  They already see it on some level anyway.  They just need YOU to give it a voice and re-direction.”

So, what does this look like?
Here are examples of a few friends who I believe do this well.

Each morning on the way to school my friend, Michael Mitchell, and author of  Life Lessons for Dad: Tea Parties, Tutus and All Things Pink has this conversation with his daughter.  Sometimes it varies a bit, but it's basically the same from day to day.

You are worthy.
You are loved.
You are sanctified.
You are a daughter of the king.
I’m proud of you.
I’m glad you’re in my family.
Do you know who made you?”
God
And how did He make you?
Good
What does Jesus want you to do today?
Be an ambassador of grace and mercy.
Who are you going to be kind to today?
Someone who needs a friend.
You can always come home. No matter what.


Similarly, one of our amazing pre-school aides has a tradition with her son. Every morning on their way to school, she and her son say a little pep talk to encourage each other about our day. His goes like this:


I am a great kid.
I go to a great school.
I will listen and obey the first time asked.
I will be kind.
I will love others the way they are.
I am smart, funny and sweet.
I am special because God made me.
Today will be a great day!


They have been saying it since the first day of school. He now has it memorized and likes to yell the last line!


Another friend of mine, Stephen Colwell, has a special Saturday morning ritual with his four-year old daughter. They have coffee together.  Stephen drinks real coffee while June gets warm milk with a spritz of coffee for flavor, but the conversation is the important part.  Throughout the week they both gather important topics they want to discuss.  Sometimes it’s “how do you play a trombone?”, and sometimes it’s “why does our friend have cancer?” Last Saturday they discussed how to use your eyes to see how people are feeling instead of what they look like.  It’s a time where her mind is captive and engaged, so Stephen makes the most of it by talking about important things.
These are just a few examples of parents being very intentional with the soft skills.

We are in this together.


As a school we are your partners on this journey! Let’s us help you teach soft skills through Bible, chapel, faith-formative adult relationships/mentors, spiritual enrichment moments/days and events like kindness costs nothing, eagle beat character words, off-site retreats, and so much more.
Let’s be partners on this journey of raising children to be kind and compassionate.  I will end with the parting words of Leslie Blanchard,

“Parents—your kids are going to eventually develop the good sense to wear a jacket and eat vegetables, invest your energy in how they interact within society. If we insist on being the hovering Helicopter Parent Generation, let’s at least hover over the right areas.