---

Kindness  is  a  Choice

Kindness is a found all around us, but not always in us or our kids.  Kindness is a choice  in how you value and treat others.  Although kindness is a choice, it can become natural to treat people with kindness for your family.

Just as most positive characteristics kids will pick up behaviors, attitudes, and actions from their parents and other adults around them.  Think about how your family treats the cashier, pizza delivery person, waitress, and others who perform service for you.  Do you regularly say thank you and make their job easier?  Dads, do you regularly open doors for others and let them go first?

Kindness isn’t hard for kids to begin to model, but they do need to see kindness in action.  A popular phrase has become “random acts of kindness.”  These acts of kindness for no real reason are great for adults and kids alike, but our desire is for this to be the starting point as a way of life.  As parents we want random acts of kindness to become a way of treating others each day.

As a family identify 10 to 12 ways to show kindness to people outside your family and 6 ways you can show kindness to people inside your home.  Spend the rest of the week trying to do each of the 16 to 18 things you identified.  At the end of the week, talk about your experiences as a family.  Then, as a family, talk about how you can continue to be a family that is kind.  Remember, the power of these conversations is letting each person share and engage the conversation.  

Nothing beats intentionality!