Love is kind, the Bible stated. What does kindness look like in love?
Unlike many other qualities in love, kindness can apply to everyone or even every living creatures. We can be kind to strangers, homeless people, lost animals, beaten plants, or hurt sea creatures and it demonstrates love. In other words, when our love is kind, it shows not just with our children but with everyone and everything we interact with.
Kindness is one of the less abstract quality that we can start ‘doing’ it right now. It is demonstrated in the smallest actions like watering the plant, waiting patiently for new part-timer at McDonald’s, picking up garbages at the beach, or warm smile and ‘thank you’ to a cashier. It can be as small as avoiding honking at rushing drivers or saying ‘it’s okay’ to others’ small mistakes. All of these acts are seen and experienced by our children next to us. They see it, THEY feel the warmth of kindness, and they imitate. The Holy Spirit within them makes our children feel good and proud for our kind acts because their parent is doing the ‘right’ thing. Naturally, they imitate kind love that has always made them feel good.
On a parallel side, they also see and feel the coldness of unkind acts. They might not say anything or seemingly have no interest in anything we do or say. However, our kids get influenced nonetheless. They all know when we are unnecessarily impatient with other people, when we carelessly throw garbage on the streets, or when we make judging comments on strangers. Even when we try to use loving gestures and words with our own children, if our acts are not kind with everything else, what we are trying to teach is mere hypocrisy.
Children truly do what they see. If we hear their unkind words or see unkind facial expressions, it might be a good time to reflect on our own behaviours and words and change them.
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