Wellness Tip - Intentional Random Acts of Kindness
This month's Wellness Tip focuses on Kindness!
February’s Wellness Tip: Intentional Random Acts of Kindness!
There are many different ways we can engage in spreading kindness this month, and all year long. Here are a few of my favourite tips for spreading kindness and helping kids to do the same!
Focus on Empathy! Empathy is key in promoting a culture of kindness in our community. This is a skill that can be taught to kids through modeling and encouraging conversations around identifying emotions in ourselves and others. Empathy is a powerful motivator for kindness! When we understand how someone else is feeling, we can identify how we would want to be treated or encouraged if we were in that situation.
Another tip for teaching empathy to your kids is to use books! Talk with your child about how the characters are feeling. Challenge your child to identify the feelings of characters, why they are feeling that way, if they have ever felt something similar, and how they could show empathy and kindness to the character in the book.
Create a Compliment Board! Find a place in your home where your family can put sticky notes with kind and encouraging words about other people. This is a great way to promote positive and encouraging thoughts about others as the norm. Parents can also model how to write kind things about others by participating and writing kind notes about your kids! If you struggle to get your kids to engage, try setting up a regular time for them to add a new note. Maybe a few times a week, right before dinner they can sit down and write a kind note!
Show kindness to workers in the community! The next time you go to the grocery store, the mall, swimming pool or any other outings, challenge your kids to come up with creative ways to show kindness to the staff. This can be as simple as smiling and saying hello, giving a compliment, or thanking a worker. This is an awesome opportunity to help kids become more aware of the world around them and ALL of the people we encounter on a regular basis. As always, leading by example is key!
Teach your kids the THINK method. Stopping to think about what we say before we say it can be the difference between making someone’s day, or tearing them down. This takes practice, but is a great tool to help us be accountable with our words. Here is a great visual you can use!
For more ideas on how you can practice kindness strategies at home with your family, check out this website! https://biglifejournal.com/blogs/blog/kids-kindness-activities
February Wellness Tip
