The best thing you can do to make the world a better place is to create a culture of kindness in your own home. When our children have a choice to help others, we hope they will. We never want them to be cruel, intolerant, or prejudiced.

But let’s face it. It’s not always easy to be kind, even for us. Even grown-ups don’t want to share our toys sometimes. Helping others can seem hard when we feel like we don’t have the help we need ourselves.

Consider these ways to show your children why the Golden Rule rules.

1. Spend time helping them understand the meaning of kindness

When kids are 3, 4, and 5, it’s a good time to start having discussions about kindness. Empathy is hardwired on everyone from the time they’re born, but it’s helpful to exemplify this in more tangible ideas for young children to grasp from early on. The Golden Rule is “We treat other people the way we would hope to be treated ourselves,” which you can explain using examples such as- “You wouldn’t want someone to tease you about your clothes bites, so you shouldn’t tease your cousin.”

Once they seem to grasp this, you can move on to the Platinum Rule, which is that we treat people the way that’s best for them, even if that’s different from what’s best for us.

2. Share and discuss real life stories of acts of kindness

Thinking What would that feel like? is one of the most powerful habits we can instil in our children. You can’t be a compassionate person unless you have an active imagination—you have to be able to step into someone else’s shoes

Sharing stories of acts of kindness is a great way to inspire your children and help them understand using real life examples what kindness should be all about!

3. Use games as learning tools

It feels good to receive a compliment. In fact, researchers at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences in Japan found that the same area in the brain, the striatum, is activated when a person receives a compliment as when they are given money. You can use games as learning tools to encourage things like complimenting. You can create a tally chart and turn compliment giving into an exciting and kindness oriented game!

4. Perform random acts of kindness with your children

Random acts of kindness can be anything that will make someone’s day a little brighter. They don’t even have to know who did it. Challenge your children to perform random acts of kindness for other students and teachers at school, or with other family members. You can also perform random acts of kindness towards them so they understand the benefits and importance they have!

5. Try empathy charades

Having empathy for others requires putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagining how they feel. You can draw images of faces on the board and have your children guess the emotion that’s being displayed. You can also act out different emotions and guess what other people are feeling. Once again this is an example of using games as learning tools and it can be a very effective way to keep your child engaged!

6. Do some volunteering!

Nothing quite shows more kindness than volunteering your time and energy towards a good cause without expecting anything in return! Whether you take small or big actions, help other people or help animals, there is always a way to lend a helping hand. Involving kids in volunteer work teaches them that it feels good to be helpful. You might collect garbage from the park, visit a local retirement home, or clean out your closets to make a donation to those in need. Perhaps your kids will be inspired to fund-raise for a good cause. There is no limit to what your kindness can do.

7. Keep inspiring them

Throughout their lives keep your children inspired to do good by others and instil the habit of them thinking about how others would feel before they act or speak!

About the Author:
Christina Lee is a social media strategist at Academized and PhD Writers writing services. She writes about marketing news and technologies for such services, as Write my essay, and others.