Harvard researchers have completed a study that will hopefully make the world a better place.
The study is not the usual research that will make technological or medicinal advances possible but a study into kindness. A study that puts the focus on more traditional values rather than personal success or financial gain. It is a study with the potential to change our approach to parenting.
Most parents would rightly say that instilling kindness and compassion for others in their child is of huge importance. However Harvard researchers found that among the children surveyed by the Making Caring Common project, nearly 80 per cent said that they believed their parents had taught them to rate personal happiness and achievement ahead of caring for other people. The study was a major undertaking, with 10,000 kids at a range of middle and high schools in the US in 2013 to 2014 being surveyed and clearly the results are hugely important for those of us raising the next generation.
Obviously achievement for our children is important to all of us, and it is easy to imagine why children may be getting mixed messages about what it is we, parents, value. Often, as parents, we are inclined to reward more tangible achievements like school reports over things like generosity or helping others.
The Harvard study goes on to outline 5 practical steps we can take to teach our children to genuinely value kindness (and perhaps remind ourselves as well):
1. Give kids opportunities to practice being kind
“Learning to be caring and to lead an ethical life is like learning to play an instrument or hone a craft. Daily repetition—whether it’s helping a friend with homework, pitching in around the house, having a classroom job, or working on a project on homelessness—and increasing challenge make caring second nature and develop and hone youth’s caregiving capacities.”
2. Children need to learn to “zoom in” on individuals they meet and also “zoom out” to understand the bigger picture
By “zooming in” they will start to listen more closely to and understand the perspective of others. By “zooming out” they will begin to understand multiple perspectives “such as the new kid in class, someone who doesn’t speak their language, or the school custodian” and start to give greater consideration to others and learn that their experience has equal weight.
3. Kids need role models
“Being a role model doesn’t mean that we need to be perfect or have all the answers. It means grappling with our flaws, acknowledging our mistakes, listening to our children and students, and connecting our values to their ways of understanding the world. It means that we, too, need to continually practice and zoom in and out, cultivating our capacities for care, widening our circles of concern, and deepening our understanding of fairness and justice.”
4. Help children manage destructive feelings
“Often the ability to care for others is overwhelmed by anger, shame, envy, or other negative feelings. We need to teach children that all feelings are ok, but some ways of dealing with them are not helpful. Children need our help learning to cope with these feelings in productive ways.”
5. Adults need to reconnect with these values also and engage with our children on the wider questions of justice and kindness.
“We will need to take on the large and fundamental problem of the messages that our society sends to our children about the definition of success and about what it means to be an ethical member of a community.”
