Editor's note: This month of May the Meridian Family Value of the month is KINDNESS AND FRIENDLINESS. Click here to read this month's overview article). Each week during the month we will post an update in Meridian, illustrating a couple of the Eyres' favorite methods for teaching This important value to each age group. Remember that you can also go to http://www.valuesparenting.com/ for still more ideas and teaching methods. Thanks for your interest and participation. There are tens of thousands of parents concentrating on this value this month. It is a way of saving this somewhat unkind and unfriendly society of ours ? one family at a time! Send us your feedback, and if you want a free children's CD on the value of Honesty, see the instructions at the bottom of this article.

Methods for Preschoolers

Have the Child Choose Someone for Whom He’d Like to Do a Good Deed

This teaches small children the feelings of joy that come from giving. The person could range from a best friend to a kind, elderly neighbor. Then take a plate of cookies or a flower to them. Kindnesses performed together can be some of life’s most memorable experiences.

The Kindness Game

One way to teach little children the definition of kindness is by playing a game with them. Use the following as a test scenario. Then fill in with your own examples:

Say, “I’m going to tell you about some little children and you tell me whether what they do is kind of unkind.”

• Timmy is invited to play at Rob’s house, but after he’s been there about a half hour, he says, “I’m tired of playing with you. I’m going to Zachary’s house.” Kind or unkind? Why?
• Sarah is playing with Jane when she suddenly says, “You have really pretty red hair!” Kind or unkind? Why?
• And so on — make up your own.

Methods for Elementary School Age

Teach Your Children to Deal with Cruelty

You can protect your children against other children’s cruelty and sensitize them to trying to avoid the characteristic in themselves. Although teasing, unkindness — downright cruelty — is apparent at every age, we have found it is particularly prevalent in elementary-age children.

Unkindness can be handled much better if you teach your children two concepts. First, children who are really cruel almost universally do it as an outgrowth of their own insecurities. Almost inevitably they are experiencing problems at home or some kind of identity crisis. Cruelty is really that child’s problem. If the victim of the child’s mistreatment takes the abuse too seriously, then it becomes his problem too.

Second, something can usually be done about the problem of cruelty. If the child can tell his parents about the problem, the very telling will help. Although it is difficult for a sixth-grader to tell his tormentor how his unkindness makes him feel, it sometimes helps. For difficult or extreme cases, parent and child may need to meet the other parent and child. Although it’s sometimes embarrassing for parents and kids alike, this kind of meeting can work wonders.

When Joshua was ten, he went through a period when he was being teased mercilessly by some of the boys in his class. A lot of teasing stemmed from Josh’s disinterest in sports. Twin boys were the ring leaders, and Josh began coming home from school every day saying that he didn’t want to go tomorrow.

We tried to help him think of things to say to the boys, then we tried to encourage him to ignore them. Nothing helped. They knew they were getting to Josh, and matters just got worse. The twins were not only teasing but shoving Josh, calling him a chicken, and asking him why he didn’t dare fight them.

Richard finally decided it was time to go see the twins and their parents at their home. Josh hated the idea. He begged his dad not to go, and when Richard told him he was going and wanted Josh to come with him, Josh really panicked. “No, Dad, no, I promise I won’t mention it again. I’ll work it out myself, don’t worry.”

But by then we were convinced Richard should go. We finally calmed Josh down, and we drove to the address we found in the school directory.

As so often happens, so much was explained by the parents and the home. The father was on his way to a karate club. He was a military, macho kind of guy, and his boys were imitating him. But he was responsive to our concerns. He had his boys apologize to Josh and then the three of them spent a little time together while the dad and Richard talked.

Afterward (for days afterward) we praised Josh for the courage he’d shown ingoing over there, and we talked together about why those boys acted the way they did.

Although we hate to admit it, sometimes our child is the one making another child miserable. In such cases we may realize that the problem is not that we have taught our child to be mean to another. The problem is that we haven’t taught him enough about being kind and sensitive to others. Maybe we also have not taught him well enough that the feelings of others are fragile and crucial to their overall well-being. In these cases we can console ourselves by realizing that it is never too late.

By “respectful questioning,” we mean two things. First, we should realize that we are dealing with real people from the past who were acting in real time. We must respect them as individuals. We must be more sympathetic and less judgmental than we often are when we judge historical figures from our modern perspective.

One week Linda discovered that our fifth-grader was not being very kind to a friend who had been spending lots of time at our house because his parents worked and were not home until late evening. “I’m not going to play with Jared so much anymore because when people see me with him, they think I must not be too popular if I spend a lot of time with him,’ he stated in his very matter-of-fact, fifth-grade way. a long discussion followed about kindness and friendliness. When it was over, we both felt a little wise (and maybe a little more mature!)

Teach Children to Look for Those Who Have Been Left Out

This will help open their perspective and see opportunities for friendliness and love. Although sometimes it takes a little more maturity than elementary school children possess, it is important to raise their awareness of the children who are being left out and to encourage them to try extra hard to include these children. One evening we asked our boys to name a few children who were being left out or teased by their peers. They easily thought of several. We asked them to do something about it the next day and report back at dinnertime. The stories were not only heartwarming, they were ongoing. Some of those left-our children became good friends.

Methods for Adolescents

Teach Them That Maturity Begins When They Can “See Through Windows Instead of into Mirrors”

This will help adolescents conceptualize the problem of selfishness and the solution of empathy.

Linda admired a certain girl in high school very much: She was a year older than I, so that made her (in my mind at least) too old to be really close friends with. But I watched her and decided I wanted to be more like her. Instead of her being worried about which boys liked her or what others would think of her, like so many of the kids her age, I noticed that she was always nice to everyone, especially the mentally challenged girl whom others made fun of or tried to ignore. Whenever I talked to her, she complimented me and asked me about my life. I could never get her to talk about herself very long. She always seemed sincerely interested in everyone else and was always careful to include everyone in a conversation — even a stupid little underclassman like me. Even though she wasn’t the most beautiful or stylish girl in the school, everyone loved her. She easily won the election for student-body secretary and “Most Likely to Succeed” even though she often campaigned for her opponents.

We’ve told this story to our children often — to the point that they must feel like they know this girl. The point is that life becomes much more secure and mature when we can look through the windows of our lives and see the needs of others instead of allowing everything to reflect back on us as does a mirror.

Teach Them that You Can Learn Something from Everyone, even if They’re “Weird.”

This can help “open up” children’s attitudes to other people who are very dissimilar to them. Often teenagers feel they can only be friend with people who are like they are. What a great slice of life they miss!

After a P.E. class one day Kristen, a friend’s daughter at the junior high, began to talk to a girl who identified herself as a “rocker’ by wearing black clothes and a wild hairdo strayed orange and green. She found the girl to be a conversationalist and continued the relationship. After a week Kristen’s friends confronted her. “Why do you spend your time with her?” they asked. “You’re a cheerleader and you have a reputation to think about! What do you see in her? We’re scared of her. You’d better watch out!”

Kristen filled the unthinking girls in on what she had learned about her new friend the rocker during the past week. When she was eleven, she had seen her uncle shoot and kill her father. Her mother was an alcoholic, and she went home each day to an empty, topsy-turvy house. Kristen had wisely figured out that her manner of dress was her cry for attention. As a result Kristen’s friends gained a new respect for her, and new tolerance for the other girl.

See you next week for the Meridian Family value of the Month for June! It is a great one!

Closing Note: Many have asked if there are actual teaching tools to assist parents in teaching the Meridian family value of the month to their children. The Eyres have been involved with a series of values-teaching CDs called Alexander's Amazing Adventures, which give 5-14 year old children a vicarious (and dramatic) experience with each month's value. By special arrangement, Meridian readers who have been following this column and participating in the value of the month can now receive, as a free gift, the HONESTY CD from this series. Simply send a self-addressed, stamped 5 X 7 or 8 X 10 envelope (the padded ones are best) to the Eyres at 1098 Augusta Way, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84108 and they will send you the gift CD. (You will need to put $0.87 [87cents] in stamps or postage on your return envelope.) Please respond only if you have been reading and following the column, and please do not ask for more than one copy of the CD. We hope this gift will help make the value-of-the-month concept even more effective within your family.