Photo by Artem Kniaz on Unsplash
Parents are responsible for raising the critical link to achieving a better world. This change can start once they encourage children to be altruistic.
All it takes for the world to become more peaceful is one good deed at a time.
This will not change the world instantaneously. But doing a single good deed every day can influence others, thus promoting a more sustainable, albeit gradual, improvement in the world. When everyone aims to do good, this virtue can multiply tenfold – the butterfly effect, as it’s more popularly known. The more people are exposed to the goodness in the world, the more likely they’ll practice doing so, as well.
Regardless of how bleak the world is now, peace and harmony shouldn’t be considered hopeless and unattainable dreams. After all, studies have pointed out that morality and kindness may not be solely learned. Instead, they’ve been instilled in everyone from childhood. Kindness is caged deep within everyone’s essence, a value most people have been born with, and whether it is actuated depends on the environment these children grow up in.
Children Are Endowed With Compassion – Nurture It
Compassion has gradually become a wasted virtue. Unfortunately, as society turns toward a more digital era, all people practice to embody this is tossing sentiments without acting on them. Stuck behind their screens, most have deduced empathy and sympathy as verbal expressions, typing away their kindness instead of working on physically helping others.
Fortunately, things still have the chance to change for the newer generations.
It’s never too late to instill within them that actions speak louder than words, regardless of whether the latter can influence more people and the former less. It’s never too late to encourage children to be altruistic and embody a gentler, kinder person toward everyone. Beauty starts from within, and kindness as early as childhood. It’s something children can learn and master through practice and time. And it’s something parents must instill in them, nurturing it through modeling and guidance.
Being altruistic and gentle to everyone are virtues children can learn from a book by author Chris Cochrane. In The Dinglehopper Blueberry Belly-Button Snooter, readers are introduced to a character who unconditionally helps those who need it. Despite no rewards for its action, this character does not hesitate to go out of its way to help others in the best possible way. It’s this unconditional kindness that encourages children to be altruistic. It’s how they see the beauty in reaching out to others without asking for anything in return.
Encourage Children to Be Altruistic and See the World Change
Children hold the key to a better future. They’re the bearers of hope in a world endowed with bruises and darkness. The newer generations have the most potential to change and improve the circumstances in which they’re born. But as burdensome as this responsibility is, they aren’t left to themselves to fix everything. Parents need to encourage children to be altruistic to ensure that future generations can heal and change things. They need to instill within the newer generations the value of seeing and protecting the good in everyone.
There are many ways for parents to instill in children the significance of altruism. But the question is, why should they be taught such a complex virtue as early as childhood?
Some people don’t believe in the existence of altruism. Regardless of the simple gesture, they think people still expect something in return. This belief turns kindness into business – a meaningless and conditional transaction. Instead of treating it as a bargain, children should be taught that helping others must be done unconditionally. It should be offered because they care and feel good about helping others.
Kindness is a spark that starts lighting one’s path until the others catch this light. It will blossom from a single instance to a universal experience. When parents encourage children to be altruistic, they allow them to be the first spark that lights the world toward improvement.