5 Ways to Teach Your Kids to be Kind Online

This mail is sponsored by Google's " Be Net Crawly" campaign. All opinions are 100% mine.

Online bullying is running rampant in our culture, ruining endless lives in the process. One cannot escape the daily articles on social media and boob tube of numerous lives lost because of the hopelessness felt from bullying, most often bullying that happens online.

Considering October is National Bullying Prevention Month, we take teamed upwards with Google and their "Be Internet Awesome" campaign to encourage parents and kids to be kind online! "Exist Internet Crawly" is a resource that includes both a curriculum for teachers and a family unit guide for parents provided by Google in both English and Spanish. This resource is "designed to teach kids the fundamentals of digital citizenship and rubber so they can explore the online globe with conviction."

Like everything in life, the internet tin be used for not bad purposes and to achieve tremendous goals of building community and support. Just unfortunately, it can also be used to devastating consequences. As parents, nosotros must have seriously the task of preparing our children to comport themselves with kindness and grace both in real life and online. 1 cannot be considered a kind person if they are not kind in all their personas, online and otherwise.

My own children are young enough that we do not even so allow digital communication, but the time is coming soon…particularly for my 10-twelvemonth erstwhile who now has to exercise quite a chip of schoolwork online. The chat nearly digital beliefs is definitely 1 that is essential to every child's character evolution and something that all parents need to engage in. We cannot rely on schools or youth pastors to teach our children how to be practiced digital citizens.

Here are 5 ways to teach your child to exist kind online:

1. Exist a expert example.

Although our children might not be reading all of our Facebook messages over our shoulders, peradventure nosotros should deport ourselves online every bit if they are. Nosotros demand to model kind and generous behavior all of the time, not merely when nosotros know our kids are watching. Engaging in online "discussions" rarely leads to a alter of middle, political or otherwise. Commit yourself to avoiding triggers that might warrant an unkind response and focus on being positive and kind online.

2. Notice opportunities to foster empathy face-to-face.

According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, "empathy" is divers as, "the activeness of agreement, being aware of, beingness sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or nowadays without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit fashion."

In the bookUnselfie:  Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in our All-Almost-Me World, Dr. Borba argues that empathy is the antidote to self-consumption and, ultimately, to bullying. The more that we can allow our children the opportunity to put themselves in someone else's shoes and identify the feelings that other person might be struggling with, the more than they can think exterior of themselves. One fashion to encourage empathy is to allow your children time with the very young and the very quondam. Babies are a wonderful way to assistance children learn how to discern feelings. And existence around older people, whether it is great grandparents or visiting strangers in the nursing home, offers your child an splendid opportunity to foster empathy and compassion.

When nosotros encourage contiguous interactions over digital interactions, we are helping our children learn what it means to be function of a community and how we tin spread kindness and pity to those around us.

3. Define what it means to exist positive and how to constructively resolve disharmonize.

Although we will not e'er feel positive and upbeat, nosotros tin commit ourselves to non responding online unless what nosotros accept to say is positive and constructive. Conflicts will arise and if nosotros do take a business concern to address, it is probably best to do and then contiguous. If that is not an option, notwithstanding, teach your child to utilise the sandwich method. Sandwich the concern betwixt two positive comments or compliments.

4. Have the IRL test.

Before your child writes a message in a text, email, or social media mail, encourage him/her to take the "IRL" test. Would he/she say the same matter to someone "in real life", contiguous? If not, prompt him/her to reconsider.

Likewise, if conflicts arise, urge your child (and yourself) to communicate in person rather than over text, e-mail, or social media. Unfortunately, there is a disconnect when we appoint with someone from behind a screen. We oft forget that the other person is a living, breathing human beingness with tender feelings and their own set of life'due south challenges.

five. Be an "Upstander" and stand for the vulnerable.

The "Be Internet Awesome" curriculum defines an "Upstander" as anyone who sees bullying and chooses to intervene past continuing up for kindness and positivity. This might be the about difficult concept of all to teach our children. After all, how does one teach courage? Information technology is and so much easier to teach your child not to exist a bully than it is to teach him/her to stand up to i.

Beingness choosing to be an "Upstander" might exist the about important step to prevent bullying. Here are some means to be an "Upstander":

(i) Call out bullying when yous run into information technology by saying, "That's bullying and it is not kind." Exist careful not to unintentionally "bully" the slap-up past saying unnecessary hurtful things to him/her.

(two) Report the bullying to an developed.

(3)  Inundation the target of the bullying with positive messages and comments…and encourage others to as well.

(4) Invite the person who has been bullied to spend fourth dimension with you in real life, playing together at recess, sitting together at lunch, or spending time outside of schoolhouse.

Books that help instill the concept of beingness an Upstander:

Oneby Kathryn Otoshi

Wonderpast R.J Palacio

The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes

Google'southward "Be Cyberspace Awesome" Program is great for parents and teachers, providing an assortment of materials including a game called "Interland" that can aid your child put their anti-bullying skills to the test.

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Source: https://www.icanteachmychild.com/5-ways-to-teach-your-kids-to-be-kind-online/

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