What is kindness and how do we show it?

What is kindness and how do we show it?

Our True Character word of the month this month is kindness. Kindness is using caring words and choosing kind actions without expecting anything in return.

This blog series is for parents to help teach their kids character words. Character words that we use here in class. It’s intended to be a resource to help at home with these things.

We’re starting off the month of kindness by describing what it is, where we can use it, how we can use it.

Show Kindness At Home

At home, we can use kindness by helping our family out.

Maybe we can ask Mom or Dad if we can help set the table. If you see Dad coming home with groceries, you can come up and open the door. You can help put things away, showing kindness.

If a brother or sister is struggling with homework, you can give them a hand with it. You can lend your electronics, if somebody’s battery is dead. You can offer others to help play in a game with you.

There are many ways at home you can show kindness.

Show Kindness at School

You can show kindness at school.

When you’re in school, you can show kindness for others, help them out with their projects.

Raise your hand and answer questions with the teacher. It’s just a lot of kindness to engage with the teacher even if maybe you’re a little bored with the lesson.

We show kindness at school by helping people who are struggling. I like to see our students show kindness in school by noticing those who are being left out. When we’re showing our kindness, we notice someone like this. Someone who is maybe out in the corner, someone sitting alone someone not having others involve them. You can show your kindness by coming up, sitting with them, talking to them, involving them in what people are doing.

Show Kindness At The Studio

You can show kindness here in the karate school.

Introduce yourself to somebody who’s new. If you’ve been here for a while you know the studio, you know the instructors. When you see a new student, show some kindness. Come up to them and introduce yourself.

If you see a new student struggling with their belt, you can show some kindness by helping them tie their belt. You can show kindness by helping to teach them a lesson that you already know. You can show kindness by maybe holding a pad, so they can kick or punch and feel stronger and more confident.

If you see somebody sad here in class when we’re doing circle time before class, you can show some kindness and talk to them about their day. Just ask them how things are going.

Show Kindness in the Community

There are many ways that we can show kindness in the karate school, at home and at our regular school as well. And we can show kindness in our community too.

You can show kindness to the community at the park. You can give somebody else a turn. You can let somebody go in front of you in a line. You see a kid that falls down on the swing set, you can help pick him up.

If you see trash lying around, you can help pick that up too. You should never walk past a piece of trash laying on the ground without picking it up and putting in the garbage can.

You can show kindness to the earth by making sure you recycle, by using less energy, using less water, not polluting, and picking up pollutants that you see.

Every time I go fishing, I wind up coming home with a bag full of garbage. My son will make me turn the boat around and go over to a bag floating in the water to make sure we pick it up with a net.

You can always just show a little act of kindness like that in order to help make our world a better place.

Show Kindness to Yourself

 All right, finally you can show kindness to yourself.

We show kindness to our self by using kind words with our self. 

We’ll see a lot of us here in our school tend to be pretty kind to others.  I always see my students say nice things to other students. If I see a student upset or crying someone will console them, they’ll ask them if they’re okay.

If a student says, “I stink, I can’t do this,” another student will always come over and say, you don’t stink, you can do it. We see acts of kindness all the time between each other here in school.

We have to make sure that we say the same things to ourselves. If we ask a kid what would you say if somebody was sad, they would always say, “It’s okay it’ll get better.”

What would you say to somebody if they were struggling? “You can do it.”

What do you say to yourself if you’re struggling? You should say “You can do it” to yourself.

What would you say to somebody if they drew a picture? Would you ever tell them it was a terrible picture, or would you tell them it looked nice? If you draw a picture then don’t tell yourself it’s a terrible picture.

It’s important that we show the same amount of kindness to our self that we would anyone else.

Also show kindness to our self by taking care of ourselves. Making sure we eat good foods, making sure we get plenty of sleep, making sure we study our school work too. All of those things will help build us to be a better person.

So, kindness isn’t just something that’s limited to one place or one thing. Kindness is something we want to show everywhere.

And we will see everybody on the mat.
-Master Helsdon