Kindness Can Be Taught. Here's How

Life Kit

NPR

Health & Fitness, Self-improvement, Kids & Family, Education, Business

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most kids value success and achievement more than caring for others, according to Harvard's Making Caring Common project. Who is to blame? We are. We talk to experts for ideas on how to do better, and why.

Here's what to remember:
- Children are born to be kind — but also unkind.
- Kindness requires courage.
- To build kindness, practice mindfulness.
- Teach real apologies, and frame forgiveness as a gift you give yourself.
- Practice gratitude to "raise the capital" of everyday kindness.
- Kindness is a habit; rituals, chores and service can all help.

Transcript

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0:00.0	In this episode, how to raise kind kids and to truly understand kindness,
0:08.5	Ania and I visited a mother who's lived through every parent's worst nightmare.
0:13.9	And it changed the whole focus of her life.
0:16.2	There are only two kinds of people in the world.
0:18.9	Good people and good people in pain.
0:21.9	Her name is Scarlett Lewis and before we met her quarry, I have to confess that I wasn't
0:27.0	necessarily all that impressed with kindness as an idea.
0:32.3	I mean, you're a kindness skeptic.
0:34.5	Well, I don't want to say skeptic, but just let's say that kindness is like a slogan that's
0:39.6	on a pillow that I would never have on my couch.
0:43.0	But that really, really changed for me when we travel to rural Connecticut to spend some time
0:49.6	with Scarlett.
0:50.7	I've lived on this farm for 20 years before the two boys and it's really my dream place.
1:01.0	Scarlett named this place Wild Rose Farm.
1:04.3	There are a few chickens clucking in a wire coop behind a muddy pasture where there's also a horse.
1:10.2	This is one of the oldest farms in Fairfield County.
1:15.5	Yeah, the house is 1740, so older than the United States of America.
1:21.4	We get there in time to watch her feed the animals, including her constant companions,
1:25.6	three dogs, Remington, Rocky, and Olive.
1:30.8	I think he thought that the mic was a dog.
1:33.5	Watch out!
1:35.4	So Scarlett leads us inside the house and I remember we took our jackets off in the mudroom and
	...

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