It may seem like a no-brainer that we need to be kind to children, but it amazes me how even the most seemingly enlightened of parents unload hurt, annoyance, and negativity on their children, and when they are difficult, rebellious, critical, and hard to deal with, they are surprised and scarcely know what to do.

Now I will be the first to admit, that I’m still in the young parent stage, and I may very well have to eat my words in the future, but after having seen some world class parents (hint: they’re not on any Reality TV) and having raised other people’s children, and having been a parent myself for 11 years I’ve observed some things about why it’s a good idea to show genuine kindness to the kids in our lives.

1. They will model your behavior – Our children look at us as their primary source of character and social behavior. We are their model, and they are our parrots. We socialize them the most aside from their friends. Whatever sins we see in our children we need to look in our own mirror first (myself included). Mind you, the child does have other factors like heredity, environment, and their own character that they are born with, but in terms of what they learn from us, we really do want to put our best foot forward. We have a mantra in our house, “the people we love the most, are the people we are kindest to.” So often we prioritize kindness for everyone else first, our customers, bosses, employees, friends, colleagues, etc. and we give whatever is “leftover” to our family and those we are closest to. We need to turn that around and be kindest to our loved ones first and give the rest to everyone else. Growing up I always felt my Dad was thrilled to see us, and it’s something I’ve tried to model for my own kids.
2. You never know what memories will stick – I don’t remember everything about my childhood. It’s funny, I remember obscure childhood moments like my Dad taking us to the beach in winter because it was less busy or my mom letting me crash in their room whenever I got scared at night. Whatever obscure moments your child remembers, we want to be sure that they have more good moments to sample from than sad, annoyed, or angry moments. How do I want to be remembered by my children? Do I want them to remember me as mostly annoyed, angry, scary, and tyrranical? Or, do I want them to feel like I was always elated to see them?
3. Because it’s the right thing to do –  It brings us peace when we do something good and right, especially when it impacts our children. A lot of times we are annoyed or angry by their messes or behavior (I’m guilty of that one myself), or feel begrudging about the things we do, or we feel pressure to be a certain “good” way around our kids, and often we can end up resenting them for it. But if we take the long view, then we will realize that doing good is good for us and ends up impacting our children positively as well. Over time, if we are persistent, then kindness will actually become a habit for them to model, and hopefully it will become the culture in the home. Mind you this is not to say that we shouldn’t discipline our children, because that would be a dis-service to them and to us as parents. But often that discipline comes with a healthy dose of reactionary anger or annoyance. Often our first reaction isn’t always the best one, perhaps taking 10 seconds to breathe and think would help put us in a better state, and when we do address the sins of our children we’ll be in a better place to do so, and that goodness will radiate and transcend to our children. And doing good is just always good.

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