Is there anything more beneficial than instilling in your children the behavior of kindness? Moreover, to think on this behavior for ourselves as well?

Random Acts of Kindness Week is Feb. 12-18, and National Random Acts of Kindness Day is officially observed on Feb. 17. It’s a movement that was founded in New Zealand but today encourages the empathy and appreciation of others across the world, and you can be a part of it.

To organize this movement, The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation is a nonprofit that believes in spreading kindness throughout schools, communities and homes. At the foundation’s website you can find kindness calendars, lesson plans, ideas and stories, or you can follow along with the hashtags #RAKWeek2017 and #RandomActsofKindnessWeek.

But above all, you can keep your head up and be kind to one another, this week and always.

Do you talk about kindness often in your home? Are there ways that you are building an environment for your child that encourages social awareness, positive relationship skills and acts of good will?

This demonstration of care — both for one’s self and for others — can begin at birth for a child, and we can help foster the notion that kindness is not an act we remember to do every now and then, but instead a natural, innate quality of the heart, an expression genuinely within us.

A way to care for our world.

Enjoy some of the Random Acts of Kindness below with your family this week, and remember, too, that kindness is not boastful or pretentious. A genuine care for others does not need to be recorded or proven or shouted to the world, it simply should be done onto others quietly, respectfully and out of love.

How are you going to be kind?

1. Help a stranger in need, and smile to all strangers you pass by.
2. Say something nice to someone you care about, and practice positive self talk.
3. Look people in the eye when talking to them or saying “Thank you,” and smile.
4. Listen more, and talk less.
5. Offer a hug to someone having a bad day, and ask questions.
6. Always hold the door open for others.
7. Visit the elderly, and ask them to dance, sing or tell a story.
8. Compliment friends and strangers.
9. Let others in when driving in heavy traffic.
10. Let someone go in front of you in line.
11. Buy flowers, and then give them to the cashier.
12. Leave a special treat for the mailman in your mailbox.
13. Make a big “Thank You” sign and leave on the lid of your garbage can.
14. Bake cookies for your local bank, post office, police or fire station, thanking them for their service.
15. Take donuts to school or daycare for your child’s teachers.
16. Put extra change in someone’s parking meter.
17. Shovel your neighbor’s driveway, or clean the snow off someone’s car.
18. Donate school supplies to your child’s school.
19. Anonymously give a grocery store gift card to a single parent or family in need.
20. Visit an animal shelter or donate pet food or blankets to the shelter.
21. Cook or share a meal with a loved one.
22. Take someone you care about to a movie or out to dinner.
23. Write a letter or send a card to a friend.
24. Donate old clothes, and leave positive body image notes in the pockets.
25. Start a gratitude journal.

About the Author

Angela Tewalt is a writer, storyteller and mother to two boys. She shares parenting stories and inspiration in Guidepost Parent.

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