How to Teach a Child Kindness

There are many products on the market to help children learn their ABCs and 123s, but how do children learn about qualities like kindness and compassion? The Kindness Chart lets children know that their parents value compassion and selfless behavior and helps kindness become a habit.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper
• Pens or markers
• Stickers

1. Label the page with "Kindness Chart."

2. Create a grid with ten evenly-spaced columns across the sheet and as many rows as you can fit.

3. Give your child a sticker whenever you see her being helpful or kind to someone else. Kindness generally means doing something to help out even when there is no direct benefit to your child.

4. When your child fills up a row, take him out for a special treat. Keep the treat simple and inexpensive, like going out for milkshakes.

Tips & Warnings

• Use a computer to make grids easily with even columns.
• At first it may seem that your child is only looking for ways to earn stickers. Stick with it. Before long, kindness and compassion become a habit and your child will have lots of great ideas on how to be kind to others.
• Having a kindness chart reinforces the idea that kindness is important to you and your family. Kindness matters so much that you made a chart to track it.

[Quickstar]

on 5/7/2009 Great idea for a Kindness chart:)