Teaching Kindness: Moments a Day {Random Acts of Kindness}

Below is the next installment in the popular series on Random Acts of Kindness. Each month, a blogger shares the random acts of kindness they have committed with their little ones. You can visit the Random Acts of Kindness page to see previous installments of this series. You can also follow the Random Acts of Kindness Pinterest Board.

Today’s post comes to us from my friend Chelsea of Moments a Day.  Her blog is full of wonderful ideas to build children’s characters in ways that are both inspiring and practical.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading Leanna’s Random Acts of Kindness series since it started up last year.  It is so inspiring to see what mothers are doing with their children to spread kindness in their families, communities, and throughout the world.

Over the past month, my family has done several kindness inspired activities which have given me several insights.

Here were some of the highlights:

(Feel free to click on the photo to go to a full post about the activity!)

We brainstormed all the ways we could be kind, found photographs to represent the ideas, and then created a Kindness Corner in our home.

We played a drawing game to think about how using kind (and unkind) voices makes people feel.

We went to the mall and gave a little gift to random children to brighten their day.

While tackling these projects and thinking so much about kindness, I began to reflect more on how exactly I am modeling kindness to my children.  Here are some of the questions I asked myself:

Am I speaking and making requests with a kind tone?
Am I treating my husband with kindness?
Am I being compassionate when my children are struggling?
Am I being kind to myself when I am having challenges?

I have realized that, while kindness seems like such a simple idea, it is actually a very in depth concept which can affect every single action of the day.  The effects of kindness are limitless.

These reflections have helped me try to recognize and encourage acts of kindness in our home more often, to bring a more positive and kind attitude to my role as a mom.

Even though the actions I see may not be *huge* on their own, they are affecting all the people in my home… who then go out and spread kindness to others… who then spread kindness to others… and the acts of kindness go on and on.  This makes me feel even more inspired to celebrate the little acts I see every day.

I hope that through the coming seasons of motherhood I can learn to incorporate more acts of kindness into our daily and yearly routines, and that some of our projects can grow in complexity as my children become older and choose for themselves what actions they would like to take to spread kindness in our community.  I’m very thankful for all the ideas being shared, and I look forward to learning more through experience and reading about others’ experiences as well.

By simply talking about and sharing ideas, we are all bring a little more kindness into the world!

Chelsea is a mom of two young boys and blogs at Moments a Day sharing activities, ideas, and resources for families to connect and build character.  She believes in using small moments throughout the day to help children learn how to use their head, heart, and hands to make the world a better place.  Join her on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter to stay in touch.

Note: There are many stories of kindness going around the blogosphere.  Sheila from Pennies of Time recently put out an amazing compilation of blogs that try to make a difference in the world (which both All Done Monkey and Moments A Day are featured in!) which you can find here.

If you are looking for even more ways to spread kindness in the world, you may find some inspiring projects and ideas there.

You can see a full schedule of the posts in this series by visiting the main Random Acts of Kindness Challenge page. You can also follow the Random Acts of Kindness Pinterest Board.