Mental Health Awareness Kindness Series (5)

WHERE DOES KINDNESS BEGIN?

In January 2017 I delivered my first school workshop on kindness. I’d created a video of my year of kindness and shared this with a primary school during assembly. Knowing that there was a great deal to kindness, I’d offered to design a workshop for the 10-11 year old students. 

Now I was no teacher or expert in the delivery of material to children but do have a wider experience in public speaking and delivery - and I’m a mum to 3 children. I knew that kids, on a Friday afternoon, tend to be restless and sometimes a little silly - that was my slot for delivering my first workshop. It was being done purely as an act of kindness and giving but I was nervous!

I began with asking the children if they fancied being “kindness adventurers” and had a fully planned session with space rockets, planets, stickers and golden strings. They were pretty captivated and enthusiastic but I knew that to really get them on board I needed to get any residual silliness out of the way so I asked them to write down a question - any question that they wanted to ask me before we set off on our adventure. 

We went round the classroom and I was asked my shoe size, my favourite act of kindness, what I was having for dinner and if I really did make the cakes in the video they’d watched from my year. Then there was the last table of children with their questions. All was going well, and then a smart looking boy who had been waiting for his turn patiently began to speak. His face was completely serious and his eyes fixed intently on everything I was saying. I asked him for his question and he sat dead still and simply said:

“Isn’t kindness just for girls? Isn’t it something embarrassing?” 

To say that I was shocked was an understatement . The teacher in the classroom was equally shocked, but as our eyes darted to each other for a response, I knew I had to face up to this one myself.

As my mind raced to find a suitable and calm reply, I realised that this boy meant no intentional harm in his question. He was serious and wanted an answer. I asked the young boy if I could come back to his question at the end.

I continued with the workshop but added an impromptu “Kindness Heroes” piece having grabbed a magazine from my bag. 

I shared a story of David Beckham leaving an incident where an elderly gent had fallen and injured himself, only to return moments later with hot drinks for the man and those waiting with him. I then shared the story of Nelson Mandela helping his prison guards to learn and be educated while incarcerated. I finished by talking of a third “kindness hero”, Malala Yousafzai and how, after being shot went on to win the Noble Peace Prize and use the money build a school and support children and young people in their right to education. 

At the end of my afternoon with the children, I ask each of them to write down something they learned from the workshop. The room was buzzing with energy and insight - and then it was the little boys turn to tell me what, if anything, he’d learned. 

He had a very different look on his face, this time he was beaming, he was sat with an ease and his eyes sparkled - and he told me that he had learned that “kindness is for everyone and you need to be brave to be kind”. I fought back the tears in my eyes as I realised no one had ever taught him what kindness was because no one had ever shown him.

What is your early experience of kindness?