09/08/2023
Kindness
The Most Important Back to School Item
New clothes and shoes, haircuts, backpacks filled with sharpened pencils and neat notebooks.
If you’re like me, you were excited to get back to a schedule, but a wee bit sad about the end of summer and all the good that comes with it.
Not the refereeing of children, but the break from alarm clocks and all that pesky rushing.
No matter your feelings, most of us have by now sent our people out the door.
I have four of them and they’re not so little anymore. Third grade to twelfth grade, three teenagers and three different schools, and I’d like to talk to you about the most important back to school item.
Kindness.
For families like mine who have children with special needs, going back to school stirs a mama heart into a fretful cauldron of fear.
For typical families whose children have become the object of bullying, like the girl named Kallie who died by su***de on her third day of eighth grade at Southeastern Stokes Middle School in Walnut Cove, NC.
Her funeral is tomorrow.
Kallie’s dad shared this with me.
“My daughter was kind, loving, compassionate, and empathetic. She loved and just wanted to be loved and she didn’t deserve this. If we can save other kids, then her death will not have been in vain.”
My own daughter is in the eighth grade.
Be nice, we say, but is that enough?
Su***de is the 2nd leading cause of death for children ages 10-19. I had no idea.
Before we usher our kids out the door, we need to talk to them about kindness.
Like, really talk to them.
Talk about the boy who may be in their high school math class this year and has Asperger’s.
Talk about the girl who’s navigating the middle school as a brand new student- in her wheelchair or maybe she just walks sorts of funny or is hard to understand.
Talk about the boy who looks different and acts younger, her genetic differences obvious to the world.
Talk about the girl who keeps her head down or maybe she lost her mother a few years ago and is struggling.
Talk about the little boy named Amos who talks to himself and giggles.
He’s almost ten and in a regular third grade classroom, but his mother worries.
Will you help me?
Say hi in the hall, offer a high five, join someone for lunch, chase the boy on the playground, maybe offer a piece of gum or a high five?
Stand up when someone sends a mean snap, offers a shove or excludes.
Notice the new kid or the not so popular kid or when someone is struggling to make friends.
How can we make the day brighter for the one person who may need a little bit extra love and kindness?
We talk to our kids. ❤️
