This is the first line of my Mom's Choice Award-winning book, Beautiful Me. It is basically the premise for the whole book. When the wild idea to pen a book for young girls about inner beauty popped into my head I first had to decide what beautiful looked like.
Google (notice how Merriam-Webster is no longer our go to these days) defines beautiful as something that is "pleasing to the senses or mind aesthetically". Now, to me that means more than just a pretty face. Anyone can doll themselves up and put on a beautiful mask, but as we all know that artificial beauty doesn't last long nor does it "aesthetically please" the mind for very long.
So, I sat down with my bright idea and did what any sensible writer would do, I brainstormed. (I say sensible here, because I have been known to lose my sensibility while writing and forget the power of brainstorming when I enter that dreaded zone writers fear called, "writer's block".)
When I took a moment to really think about the beautiful people in my life or those people that I just genuinely gravitated toward, they were people who showed kindness. It is authentic kindness that I believe is at the root of true inner beauty. Show me a kind person and I will show you a flock of people attracted to that person.
Kindness can be hard to come by in this world. Why else do random-acts of kindness make such huge headlines in our newsreels? We seek kindness from others, because it makes us feel good, makes us feel valued.
Where kindness is absent, ugliness spawns. It is where malice, fear, and defensiveness brew. This is where parents jeer the other little league team that wins the game against their child's instead of extending a heartfelt congratulations for a game well-played and an experience shared. Kindness is absent when we refuse to tell the woman next to us that she looks fabulous in her $700 dress because you feel inadequate in your $40 bargain bin frock--when in all reality does it really matter what the price tag is???
Kindness is simply a choice. A conscious choice to be made and shared with the world. I would love to live in a world that blossomed with kindness, wouldn't you?
How to Teach Kindness:
Model it: You will hear me say this a lot. Parents and caregivers are children's most immediate teachers. If they see you acting with kindness they will likely follow suit. If they see you help the neighbor take out her trash, they will more likely grow up to help their neighbor take out the trash. And don't be afraid to teach your kids that they can help a neighbor or a grandparent without getting paid, to simply do it because it is the kind thing to do.
Talk about it: Bring attention to a moment when someone was kind to you that your child observed and let them know how that made you feel. Try to help your child talk about times when they felt someone being kind to them or when someone was not kind to them. This teaches empathy and helps kids to realize the impact of their actions.
Be patient: Young children are developmentally at a stage where their world's are all about them. This egocentric phase is normal and makes unselfish behavior less of the norm, but that will change and when their eyes open to the world around them all that teaching you have been doing about being kind to others will start to sink in. Don't give up hope if your little one isn't ready to share her mittens with another child right away. This takes time and consistent modeling.
Please share a story about how you have witnessed kindness from the beautiful people in your life.
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