In our home, how you treat other people is more important than how you feel. Practically everyday myself, my husband, and my children feel annoyed, grumpy, or put out. Life is tough. We get hungry, tired, hot, cold, have hormone imbalances, feel over crowded or over stimulated. Girls have pms. Sometimes we may feel less important or unloved. Unhappy and unpleasant times arrive. There are many, many reasons to not want to respond kindly to those around us.We do not accept excuses for being mean from ourselves or our children. We wouldn't have a happy family if it was okay to be rude every time we got hungry or hot.
We teach our children that they have to be nice even when they don't feel nice. When problems arrive, we look to the gospel to help our children understand. In John 13:14-17 and 34 it says:
" 14 If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.
16 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another."
I love the "happy are ye if ye do them." How we treat others is tightly bound with our own happiness. A happy person is not rude, indifferent, and mean to those around them. A happy person is kind, involved, and compassionate to those around them.
When someone and especially when family members are mean and indifferent toward me, it makes me sad. If I turned around and spread that sorrow, our family would be a harmful place. The Savior is perfect. His perfect law of "love one another" makes a happy family. The idea of love one another unless...harms a family.
In our home repentance and forgiveness go hand and hand with kindness and charity. When someone slips and says mean things or hurts another family member intentionally, forgiveness is a must, as is repentance. A big part of being kind is saying "I'm sorry".
We have found that when we focus on kindness, love, forgiveness, and repentance, we all feel better. When times are rough, we have the love in our home to get us through. When hormones are imbalanced the kindness of others helps. When we are hungry or tired, too hot or ill, kindness lessens the pain. Since we all experience disappointments, trials, grumpiness, tiredness, hunger, and pain, we all need to be especially cautious in how we treat each other and not excuse ourselves just because.
3 comments:
Someone at work was talking about a lesson his family was taught on kindness, which consisted of the following points:
1. The best way to learn to be kind is to forgive others.
2. We have the most opportunities to forgive in our own families. Only in our families do we know each other well enough to offend/forgive others as much as "seven times seventy"
Kindness really does begin with me. Teaching these concepts to your children is awesome. You gave the perfect formula for raising children.
Blessings and hugs for this one!
Love this! One of the things I try so hard to teach my kids is to be kind, even when others aren't. I find myself just simply saying, "Is that kind?" It's helped, but I love this perspective....going to revisit the topic again with this. Thanks!
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