Kindness Is A Virtue • 10.05.09
Kindness is an act that shows compassion, consideration and caring. Leo Tolstoy writes “Kindness is the major quality of the soul. If a person is not kind, it is because he was subjected to some lie, passion, or temptation which violated his natural state.”
By these standards, there is never (and I don’t use ‘never’ lightly) any reason to be unkind to anyone, much less our children. When we dictate, demand or disguise the truth we are being unkind. Our children, whom we are developing, are entitled to the very best we have to give them – beginning with kindness. Even though kindness is a virtue that begins within us, it is still a learned behavior. The lessons our children learn from the ‘feeling’ of being treated with kindness goes deep within their soul and becomes a ‘feeling’ they want to recapture whenever the opportunity presents itself.
So much of what we live and read about today demonstrates that kindnesses go unnoticed, making room for defensiveness, combativeness, guilt, second guessing and, worst of all, deceitfulness. Imagine allowing all those feelings to take precedent over kindness in our children.
Each and every day our children need to be exposed to kind words, deeds and actions. When we, or others, speak to them in a manner that is less than kind, it is up to our children to tell us we are acting or speaking unkindly. By doing this we are helping them understand how kindness feels so they, in turn, will choose to be kind. Kindness isn’t to be rewarded. Kindness is to be appreciated and noticed for its ‘inner strength’. To show empathy, importance, and sensitivity towards our children’s dilemma’s and successes, whether in school, in church, in the neighborhood or in the home, showing them kindness is an essential component to their personal emotional development. K.I.K. (Keep it Kind) Hugs!
