Sam had been on his last nerve most of the day, so when his best friend refused to share a beloved game on his tablet, he demanded (within his mother’s earshot): ‘Kenny should go home. He’s being mean!’

As the youngest of four, Kenny had heard it all before; he ignored Sam and kept thumbing away. Sam yelled his demand louder, and his mother answered from the kitchen, ‘Be nice, Sam, or Kenny will want to go home.’

Silenced, Sam waited his turn, visibly fuming. As Sam’s mother retold the incident to her father at dinner, his response surprised her: ‘Look, nice is good, but I’ll take kind over nice any day.’

Doing something that benefits another when it’s not required, without anything expected in return—that is a kind thing to do. Younger children think of such things in terms of their consequences, not in terms of intentions or morality. While most folks think kindness must be taught, I’ve seen toddlers walk across the room to share a binky or softie to comfort a crying peer. What do they do next? They usually stand nearby to see if it worked. Typically, they get mellow and seem satisfied. It’s as if they know it is better to give than to receive.

And that is just what the science of kindness says. A meta-analysis from Oxford University’s KindLab found that performing acts of kindness improves the well-being of the giver more than it does the well-being of the receiver. That is why kindness is the most powerful and useful of all social-emotional skills. It does a body good, always. It also paves the way for all the other important social-emotional childhood skills to be more effective. Sam would have eventually felt better if he’d let Kenny play on. How do you make it matter to your child and you:

• Think, and then talk, often about kindness, positioning it as something that can be done every day. What does kindness look like in someone else? How does it feel to be kind? How does it feel to have kindness done for you, especially one that surprises you? As you answer these questions for yourself, you will be better at helping your children find the words to describe their own kindness experiences.
• Kindness is like yawning, it’s socially contagious. When adults are genuinely kind to one another, children tend to feel comfortable and more emotionally regulated. When children see it around them and hear it talked about as a value, it becomes crystal clear that kindness is expected and treasured within the family. That’s why it’s important to make it an explicit goal of family life. Of course, you’ll often miss the mark, but intention counts a lot in kindness.
• Use literature to explore acts of and stories about kindness as you read to your children and grandchildren. As you read, try to pretend you don’t already know these lessons. Ask the child, or children, to whom you are reading questions: ‘I wonder what will happen next?’ Or ‘How do you think the characters feel when they are being kind or unkind to one another?’