Now I know you are thinking, um, aren’t you the woman who tells us all that kindness will make our brains and bodies smarter and healthier? And here you are telling us you want us to stop telling our kids to be nice?

Yes and I’ll tell you why…

What does nice even mean?  

We tell kids to be nice all the time.

• Hitting your brother? Be nice.

• Not sharing toys?  Be nice.

• Won’t clean up? Be nice and helpful.

It sounds good, but to be honest, that is usually about how deep it goes. Surface.

Asking your child to be nice is asking them to conform to society’s norms. It’s when your kid keeps taking another kid’s toy in the sandbox. YOU feel embarrassed and horrified by your kid not sharing and all you want them to do is share, right? Because that is what we should do, share and be NICE and keep the other moms around the sandbox from judging you and your kid as the hogger of all sandbox toys. 

Asking your child to be nice is asking them to act the way society wants us to act which is tricky cause those rules are constantly changing. Depending on situation, what you think is nice might not be nice to someone else.

Asking your child to be nice tells your child to think of themselves first and how their behavior reflects upon how they look to the world, not thinking about how their behavior affects others.

Nice stems from fear.

Fear of embarrassment, fear of not being accepted, fear of losing out, not getting along or not being included. Nothing positive will ever come out of doing something out of fear.

Don’t believe me? How many stories have you heard about a girl finding herself in trouble or being taken advantage of because she thought she should go along with what someone else said she should do. Because she was “the nice girl”. Or how about when someone doesn’t live their truth because they think they should “be nice” and then they carry the weight of not being who they truly are to keep up a farce.  

Think about when you have been nice to someone because it was easier than being honest. How about the time you avoided a confrontation because you didn’t want to have to deal with it. Honestly, did that avoidance help you, or the other person?

Nice can be manipulative.  

Nice is Eddie Haskell. Remember him?  If not, that’s ok, I am dating myself. He was a character on an old show called, Leave It To Beaver. He was the next door neighbor kid who always said the right thing to win favor over the Mrs. Beaver. He was always nice and complementary, but he had an ulterior motive. Nice is getting what you want in the moment by changing your behavior. Nice is fake and fleeting. Nice is saying or doing something to gain favor over someone else. Nice is sugar coating something so you don’t have to deal with it.  It’s a temporary solution to an issue.

Nice is a band-aid.

How many times have you told your kiddos to “be nice” only to have them turn around and show the same behavior all over again? Nice looks pretty and cleans things up in the moment, it may even temporarily stop the bleeding, but the wound is still there. Nice doesn’t heal anything or teach anyone not to do the wound-causing action again.

So, how do you stop wound causing behavior? How do you teach your child to think of other’s first instead of being manipulative or not standing in their truth? You do it by teaching your kids to be KIND instead of NICE. Now, I know what you may be thinking. That’s just semantics.

It’s really not. Kindness is caring about how someone else feels and then making a choice about what to do about the situation. Nice is caring about what we get out of the situation (out of trouble, out of mom’s yelling path, out of a sticky situation, out of conflict) without much thought about the other person at all.  

I think what we mean often when we say “be nice” is actually choose kindness. In niceness, you are upholding societal views which is why someone can say something nice to you but it feels hollow. Kindness is an action. It is taking a concerted effort to choose to do something for somebody else.

Kindness also allows you to stay in your own truth and focus on a place of love instead of fear. Kindness allows you to disagree or tell someone something they may not want to hear, but in a way that tries to connect the fact that you understand where they are coming from, but that it doesn’t align with who you are. Being nice is simply saying what someone else wants to hear or what you think you should say to conform to a norm but may not be the truth.

Kindness comes from within and is not determined by what is happening on the outside. Kindness is striving to connect and make a situation better for someone else first instead of ourselves.  

So how do you teach kindness over just being nice?

First, slow down.

When you feel the urge to tell your child to “be nice,” be mindful of that moment. It’s the moment you need to slow down and discuss how their behavior is affecting those around them.

Take your kiddo in the sandbox.  When he/she isn’t sharing and you have the urge to say “be nice”, consider instead having your child look at the other child and notice that their emotional state. Try saying something like, “When you took that toy away from Suzy, how do you think that made her feel?  Look at her face, can you tell how she may be feeling?” Taking a moment to discuss how your child’s behavior affected someone else and then having them take a beat in their behavior to acknowledge how it is affecting others is truly what we want our kids to do independently. But before they altruistically just start thinking of other’s first, we have to practice.

Allowing them to come up with solutions is imperative. If you simply said “be nice”, “give it back” you have taken away the opportunity for the child to choose a path to kindness and problem-solving. Asking your child how they could be kind and what that looks like to them gives them the practice they need in righting wrongs, thinking of others and raising the awareness of social and emotional connections.

Second, proactive practice is key.

If you only address kindness in the moment when your child is being unkind, you will be forever chasing the dream of raising kind kids. Kindness needs to be a muscle that is strengthened everyday so that when your child is in a situation that requires a choice of kindness, they automatically reach for it since that is the neural pathway that has been wired to fire most often.

Setting up daily acts of kindness that you actively discuss and model is key. While we as parents often do a myriad of kind things for others all day long, we sometimes forget to point out the kindness in our acts. This could be because it is so second nature to us or we don’t want to seem braggy and boastful.  Pointing out your own acts of kindness and noticing the kind acts of others isn’t bragging or boastful however it is teaching your child to look for kindness in others and themselves and that they should be proud of the kindnesses they enact.

If you know your child has an area of kindness that needs to be strengthened, discuss it with them in a quiet moment before they encounter that situation again. This will help them proactively choose kindness over the non-desired behavior.  

Again, thinking about your sandbox kiddo, the next time you’re on the way to the park, have a discussion and role play the whole scenario. Ask your child what a kind response would be if he/she wants the toy Suzy’s is playing with.  It also may be a good idea to role play at home and when your child is playing with something take it away and then when they have a reaction of, “Hey that’s mine! or “Hey, I was playing with that!” Model a kind way to return the toy or problem-solve how you both could play with it together. Also, be sure to ask your child how they are feeling in that moment of role reversal and point out that is how other’s feel when you take things away from them.

Be sure to check out our social-emotional learning activity pack: The Gift of Kindness for easy at-home ways to build kindness in your child.

Third, acknowledge kindness in your kid.  

We expect our kids to be kind all the time. When they aren’t, we are often sure to point it out, but are we equal in our acknowledgment of when they are being kind? I am not saying that kids need to be praised for every kind act they perform. In fact, I am saying we need to go deeper than praise...to acknowledgment and recognition. Praising is surface like nice. It’s empty and fleeting. It is the what you did, not why you did it. It is the process, not the product.

Acknowledgment is letting the other person know you recognized their efforts AND how their efforts made a positive impact on you.  Acknowledgment opens the door between two people to allow for an emotional connection and understanding. It supports and promotes compassion and empathy. It strengthens the acts and thoughts of kindness.

Showing your child gratitude in kindness will, in turn, help your child to be more grateful and aware of kindness extended to them. And isn’t having grateful and kind kids the goal?

Kindness is like a boomerang. When you slow down,  practice, strengthen and acknowledge the kindness and throw it out into the world it will come back to you in the kindness you want to see in your kids. The kindness they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

Truly kind, not just nice kids, makes for a truly better world.