Random Acts of Kindness: Bilingual Babes

This is the third installment in our new series on Random Acts of Kindness. Each week a different blogger will share about a day that they and their little ones dedicated to committing random acts of kindness.

Readers will have a chance to share their own experiences with committing random acts of kindness on our Facebook page, to be a part of our final series post on December 19.

This week’s post comes to us from Bilingual Babes, who shares about her Random Acts of Kindness Day in the UK with her two young children. Visit the main Random Acts of Kindness Challenge page for a full schedule of the posts in this series.

Random Acts of Kindness: Bilingual Babes

I proudly informed my kids that today was a ‘Random Acts of Kindness Day’ and so therefore we were going to be doing kind things for other people. Pan-Pan was very surprised. ‘But we’re always kind!’ he said. How lovely that he thinks we don’t need a special day for it!

Papa thought he was being very witty: ‘Random Act of Kindness Day? Ask someone to give up their seat for you on the bus!’ In the end, we didn’t go with that suggestion! Here are our random acts of kindness, which actually ended up being spread out over a few days:

1. We stuck some coins to a parking meter.

Sticking change & a note to a parking meter

One of my own pet hates is not having any change when I need to park, so we hoped this would help someone out of a fix.

The note reads: ‘Help yourself to change (a random act of kindness)’

A couple of days later we went back to see how it was going, and found that, wonderfully, no-one had nabbed the lot, but a few people had indeed used the coins they needed 🙂

The parking meter with some of the coins taken

2. Pan-Pan gave a little girl her 10p back.

This was actually a completely spontaneous and unprompted by me in any way act of kindness! A little girl dropped 10p at the ice rink and couldn’t find it. After a lot of hunting her dad eventually decided they simply couldn’t hang around any longer and off they went, but the little girl was clearly disappointed.

Pan-Pan was very moved by witnessing all this and kept on looking. After a while he spotted the 10p, which had become lodged underneath one of the metal legs of the bench. He tried to hook it out with the blade of his ice skate, but it was too thick. Finally Papa hooked it out with his key.

By then the family were long gone so I said Pan-Pan could keep the 10p, although he looked hopefully around for them in the ice rink car park before we drove off. A few roads away, we pulled over to buy some groceries and Pan-Pan suddenly screeched, ‘It’s them, it’s them!’ And indeed it was! I opened the car door, called out so they turned around and Pan-Pan delightedly thrust the precious 10p at them. They was very surprised and very grateful, while I was quietly very proud of my generous little boy!

3. We gave away our shopping trolly with the £1 still in it.

Schmoo lurking near the trolley stand, waiting for a victim to be randomly kind to.

After shopping at Sainsburys, Schmoo offered our trolly to a lady who needed one. She tried to give us the £1 for it, but we explained it was a ‘random act of kindness’. Once again, our ‘mark’ was very surprised and very grateful!

4. We let a very busy-looking lady jump the queue at the Post Office.

I realise that letting someone queue-jump is one of the simplest kindnesses you can do when you’re not in a hurry and there’s someone behind you who clearly is! I’m going to try and be more aware when out and about so I can do this more often.

5. Schmoo and Pan-Pan each made a picture for their Grandma far away in Ghana.

Bilingual Babes

Tallulah is bringing up her children, Schmoo (age 8) and Pan-Pan (age 5), to speak 3 languages: English, French (non-native) and a little bit of Twi. Her blog is “the story of our multilingual misadventures, involving 2 children, 3 languages, and a great many chocolate bribes in my attempts to bring language and positive identity to our kids.”

You can read more about their adventures and Tallulah’s research on multicultural products at Bilingual Babes. You can also visit Bilingual Babes on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Watch for a post next week from Little Red Farm! You can see a full schedule of the posts in this series by visiting the main Random Acts of Kindness Challenge page.