My Daughter is Kind

Recently my daughter came home with her school work from the week and on the back of one of her papers was a note from her teacher that said ‘She is an awesome role model to the rest of the students in class. You should be very proud’. The following week on her Friday memo, which lets me know how she did in school that week, her teacher typed in bold letters, ‘She is the most caring kid in the class’. I can’t express the amount of pride my husband and I felt because of these two statements.

I shared one of these things on my Instagram page, not to brag, but to acknowledge the kindness that my daughter has within herself. Most of the comments I received were about my daughter and how much people love her and a few congratulated my husband and I for doing such a good job raising her. And while I appreciate those comments, the truth is, I can’t take credit for how kind my daughter is, I don’t want to be given that credit, it’s all her.

Yes, my husband and I try to raise her the right way. We tell her to be kind to everyone she meets, we teach her right from wrong, we explain what it means to be a good person. But at the end of the day all of that is just words, just things we say to her. And while I know she listens, she hears what we’re saying and she understands, it’s up to her to decide whether or not she acts on them. People always say that good kids come from good parents and I mostly agree with that. But if we say that does that mean bad kids come from bad parents? Again, sometimes that is true, but not all of the time.

I believe that most parents do the best that they can to raise their children well. We all fall short sometimes but that doesn’t mean we are bad parents. There are kids in the world who are not nice, we all know bullies exist, but I can’t believe that there are parents out there who teach their kids to behave like this. In elementary school we had a bully in class. He wasn’t just a bully; this kid was an asshole. He was mean just for the sake of being mean. But if you knew his mother, she was the nicest person, as was his sister. I’m sure they were raised the same way, grew up in the same house, but he chose a different path anyway. He was nothing like the rest of his family. No matter how many times he got into trouble he didn’t want to change. And I’m sure people looked to his mother and blamed her, wondered what she was doing wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. Her son made his own choices, for his own reasons. His choice was to be mean which was no one’s fault but his own.

My daughter chooses to be kind. Every day she goes to school she makes that choice. And I can’t take credit for the choices she makes on her own. That’s the way her heart is wired. Every day she chooses to be nice to people. Even when other kids haven’t always been nice to her. She had a girl in her class last year who didn’t always say the nicest things so on days my daughter told me she played with this girl at recess I would ask why and her response was either ‘she had no one else to play with’ or ‘because she asked me to’. It didn’t matter how many times this other girl was mean or times she didn’t want to play with my daughter, she was forgiven. That doesn’t come from me or my husband, that comes from our daughter.

She was at a birthday party once and she didn’t know the other kids there, she only knew the boy whose party it was, so she was shy. She sat with me and I asked her what was wrong and she said ‘I don’t know anyone so no one is talking to me’. Apparently, no one introduced her to the other kids and she was too shy to talk to them first. My instinct was automatically that of a mother whose child is sad because of someone else and I was pissed. So, my advice to her, not my best moment, was ‘well, he’s going to be at your birthday party soon and when he comes you shouldn’t introduce him to your friends and then he’ll know how it feels’. And she looked at me and said, ‘No, Mommy, I wouldn’t do that because that’s not nice’. And she didn’t. At her party she made sure her friend knew every other kid there and they knew him. Even when I try to teach her to be not as nice, she won’t do it, not even with permission. Because she knows how it feels to be sad and she wouldn’t want to do that to anyone else. My daughter is kind.

Last year her Kindergarten teacher told us that our daughter seemed to want to make everyone happy. And on the one hand I think that’s great, but on the other hand, I don’t ever want her to think that someone else’s happiness is more important than her own. I don’t want her to be a pushover and let people walk all over her. And in Kindergarten I think she was a little bit at first because she wanted to be everyone’s friend and she wanted everyone to like her. As the year went on, I noticed little changes in her, and even more now that she’s in first grade. I want her to be assertive and stick up for herself. I don’t want her to think it’s ok for someone to treat her badly. And she’s learning these things and she tells me stories of how she expressed her feelings to others, but she will never be mean. And for the most part, I’m ok with that. I don’t want her to be mean, but I do want her to know that it’s ok to be mean if she absolutely has to be.

My husband sat with her one night and tried to explain ‘stranger danger’ to her. And he told her that if anyone ever tried to touch her or grab her or take her, she should scream at them, and kick them or hit them to get away from them. And she said ‘Daddy, I can’t do that because that’s not nice and I like to be nice to people’. Needless to say it took a while for her to understand exactly what my husband was telling her and after a while I think she got it, and I believe that if she were ever in a bad situation, a little meanness would come out of her, but she’d be sad about it later.

My daughter is kind. There’s a buddy bench in her school at recess where a child can go sit if they have no one else to play with. When she comes home every day I ask her who she played with at recess and if it’s a name I don’t recognize I’ll ask her about them and she’ll tell me that they were sitting on the buddy bench so she went over to them and asked if they wanted to play. She doesn’t always know them well, they’re not always in her class, but she sees them on that bench and she wants to help them and make them not feel alone. And every time she tells me what she did I swear my heart swells.

She’s not only kind with actions, she’s kind with words. There’s a little girl on the bus who is mixed race and one morning she was talking to my daughter and telling her that she was different from her Mom. She has light brown skin but her Mom has white skin. I’m not sure if the girl was sad when she said this, or she just wanted to say it to someone, but without missing a beat my daughter said ‘That’s ok. Different is great!’, and the little girl smiled at her and nodded her head in agreement. And my daughter made a new friend. My daughter is in tune with other people’s feelings and somehow, she knows exactly what to say at just the right time.

My daughter is kind. For the past few years at Christmas she takes her money from her bank and she buys gifts for almost 20 family members. Not because she has to, but because she wants to. And it was her idea the first year she did it. So, she takes her money that she could be spending on herself and she picks out gifts for people to make them feel special. And she accomplishes that every year. Not every kid thinks of others the way she does.

I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a bitch at times. And I’m not always the best mother I can be. And sometimes I have days that put me in the dark. But my daughter is my light. She is my saving grace. She’s always making sure I’m ok, always asking what she can do to make me feel better, always forgiving me when I apologize. She tells me I’m beautiful even when I’m in a torn t-shirt and sweatpants. She says I’m the best on days I feel like the worst. She makes me so incredibly proud to be her Mom and I am so thankful that she chose me. She makes me want to be a better person. She is my life.

My daughter is six-years-old and already she is kinder than I ever was or ever will be. She has the most beautiful soul I have ever seen in anyone. She is magic, she is pure love. She sees the good in everyone, and I hope that she will always be this way. I hope that this crazy world never tries to take that from her. I want her to grow to be a strong woman who doesn’t let anyone or anything change her or her heart. My daughter is kind, and that makes her the best person in the world.