Planting Seeds of Kindness: It All Begins in Preschool DENISE KOTEK
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ne day this summer, I decided to dodge my rather dull “to-do” list, and head to the local pool with my daughter. As I watched her practice flip turns, my mind flitted to ideas about how to approach writing this article. Then, an unexpected gift arrived. A barefoot toddler padded over in my direction, stood in front of the chair next to me and reached down to pick up a brown hair tie from the ground. He looked up, handed it to me with a broad smile, and said, “Here!” My heart nearly melted. This child gave me an object he thought I needed, with nothing to gain and no prompting from his father — who stood in the pool waiting to resume their game. The child’s simple act of kindness came from a place deep inside, and I happened to be the lucky recipient. A 2012 study suggests that kindness is intrinsically rewarding to young children. Toddlers appeared happier when they gave away a treat of their own to a puppet than when they received a treat for themselves.1 Practicing kindness not only makes us feel good, it helps children strengthen peer relationships, increases prosocial behaviors (i.e., behaviors that benefit others or society as a whole), happiness, self-esteem, gratitude, and well-being.2 Research shows that children have a capacity for kindness, but also a capacity for cruelty that can rear its ugly head in a tendency to exclude those unlike them in race, language, gender, social groups, and behaviors.3,4 These findings reveal an exciting window of opportunity to teach our youngest learners how to tip the balance of
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their scales in favor of kindness. Our preschool teaching philosophy at St. Andrew’s is anchored in our belief that teaching social-emotional skills – sharing, comforting, self-regulation, empathy, listening, and cooperation – provides the foundation for learning and success at school and beyond. A 2015 study showed five-year-old students with higher prosocial skills were more likely to have more successful outcomes as adults in key areas such as education, employment, substance abuse, and mental health.5 In addition, a large meta-analysis of 213 social-emotional learning programs indicated that students participating in them showed improvements in many areas, including social-emotional skills and academic achievement.6 How can we influence, strengthen, and extend our students’ capacity for kindness? Laying our professional insights as teachers alongside insights from research suggests a direction to explore. It all starts with developing what’s on the inside with these four approaches: Help build emotional awareness Preschool students express a broad range of emotions every day– some joyful, some not. When students experience a conflict or feel strong emotion, teachers provide verbal support and visual prompts to help children stop, take deep breaths, problemsolve, and move forward. Children use fun breathing strategies like bunny breathing to increase oxygen flow and improve their ability to think more clearly. With practice,
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