January 08, 2024

Quote of the Week

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Editor's Choice: Top 10 Kindful Kids Of 2023

We are grateful to you for joining us this past year to explore how we can collectively raise kind, generous and compassionate children and families through our weekly newsletters.  Wishing you a bright and beautiful 2024 ahead as you continue to learn and grow on this journey.    We hope you enjoy our editorial selection of the Top 10 Kindful Kids of 2023!

With gratitude,

Your Kindful Kids Volunteer Team
(Meghna, Brinda, Neha, Deven and Trishna)


Hokusai Says: You Gotta Wobble Before You Stand

At times hardships and tests show up at our doorstep unannounced, and at others we actively choose to go into the heart of hard things. We twist, wobble, bend, stretch, even feel somewhat broken. But that is okay; we grow as we learn and learn as we grow. Gather with your family to reflect on this poem, “Hokusai Says”, or share it with grown children for their own reading. Our point is that gracefully and attentively going through hard things could be a spiritual practice in itself, though it often may look otherwise. We hope some of these words stay with you and your family.

Raising Children with Great Values
 

"Some psychologists think values are impossible to teach. But how do kids learn values, then? The way children learn values, simply put, is by observing what you do, and drawing conclusions about what you think is important in life. Regardless of what you consciously teach them, your children will emerge from childhood with clear views on what their parents really value, and with a well developed value system of their own."

The Less-Is-More Rules Of Simplicity Parenting

As parents, we are tasked with both providing direction and finding a center for our family. But, when today’s children are living amidst a barrage of mental, physical, and digital clutter, how are we to navigate a world of too much stuff and too many choices? Simplicity parenting expert, Kim John Payne’s, top tips include the following: avoid overscheduling, embrace ordinary days, reduce toys, cut back on screen time, eat together, talk less, filter out the adult world, sleep, work together, and value family time. 

Digital Mindfulness

Recently one of the servicespace volunteers asked SSP-GPT a rather curious question while in a conversation with his 7-year-old nephew.  “Can you write a poem to a first grader about being mindful while playing computer games?”  

Here's what came up.  "Absolutely, I'd be glad to create a poem for this purpose. Remember the power of verse lies not just in enjoyment, but also in sparking reflection and connection.”

Helping Kids Find a Sense of Purpose

Many young people today are drifting, full of self-doubt and anxiety. They need our help. So what do we do to help them cultivate a purposeful life? Purpose can come from things simple and familiar to us.  It’s an organizing, energizing, uniting principle for life that gives us meaning and motivation.  When young people have a destination, the right decisions along the journey become clearer. Without purpose, being a good kid can feel like an arbitrary laundry list of things to do and not to do. With purpose, doing the right thing is clear because it’s in service of a greater goal.

A Letter from Your 14-Year Old Self

When was the last time you received a hand-written letter? For students of Mr. Farrer, it was a letter that they had written to their future selves 20 years ago, full of their young hopes and dreams as well as memories of people who have since passed away.

When You and Your Child Are Stuck in a Bad Pattern

"Sages say that raising children is one of the best paths to enlightenment because it stretches the heart and teaches us to love. Sometimes, though, we get stuck. It's only human to think we should be able to make our child to change. But children (and adults!) naturally rebel against force, so you can't actually control anyone except yourself. Luckily, if you change how you engage with your child, your child will change how he responds.  That's why change needs to start with us. We're the adult, so it's our job to start the peace process."

Living Under One Roof

The arch of this straightforward, humble poem, “Allowables” travels through kindness and empathy. Spiders like humans are fragile. So is the rest of our earthly life, however inconsequential things may appear. Composed in 1968 by a celebrated poet and civil rights advocate Nikki Giovanni, this poem teaches how our fear(s) can erode compassion intrinsic to our existence, and how self-reflection on our hidden fears, our assumptions and hard-won values is a predecessor of compassion. 

Awe and Generosity

Childhood can bring a bounty of awe—the emotion triggered by mysterious experiences of things or ideas that we’ve never encountered before. As parents, it’s deeply moving to witness our children’s experience of awe—their breaths taken away, speechless apart from saying “Wow!”—because we see how it enriches their individual lives. But research also suggests that awe is important for nurturing well-being beyond our individual lives—it can spark our children’s capacity to care for others. 

Every Kid Needs a Champion

We've all had at least one teacher in our lives that looked at us beyond the obvious. They saw in us what no one could see. They made us believe in ourselves even when we had lost all hopes. Here are some of the qualities that made these champions who they were.

Reading Corner

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Be the Change

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