The Teacher

Co-regulation – the foundation for kindness
 
There is no such thing as a small act of kindness – every act creates a ripple effect. Kindness is a skill that takes many years to develop and refine. Consideration, respect and generosity are among the complex skills required to become a kind person.
Children do not simply ‘learn’ kindness, they need to live it. Kindness develops best when we are purposeful about building it, and environments that harbour and harness kindness are the most effective in building kind children.
Kindness raises other’s wellbeing and can also increase our own feelings of happiness and satisfaction. Serotonin and dopamine levels rise as we display kindness, improving mood and decreasing stress.
The links between nature and kindness are well known - spending time in nature encourages kindness and generosity. The great outdoors calms us and boosts our wellbeing; it is entirely understandable that key skills linked to wellbeing are encouraged and supported as we spend more time outside.
Kindness cannot grow where there is dysregulation. In order for children to become self-regulators, the adults around them must support children’s potentially turbulent early years through steady, loving support which is, namely, co-regulation.
In this way children learn to understand their own feelings, they calm themselves after emotional episodes and find strategies to help them in the future.
Co-regulation is at the heart of empathy. It not only calms and supports children, but it also models kindness; it gives children opportunities to see kindness and empathy in action on a regular basis. This builds a slow, sure and steady understanding of the experience of kindness.
However, it is not possible for adults to model kindness if they are unregulated themselves, especially when feeling low and particularly anxious and our amygdalae hastily enter into flight or flight ‘defence mode’.
Learning to be regulated is a life-long skill, but particularly necessary today in our world of COVID and uncertainty. 
Kindness grows where there is sustained and intentional effort to build it. Kindness is the product of back and forth interaction and engagement, where heart and mind together have an emotional response, rather than a learned social behaviour.
The power of modeling and building kindness is profound. It may not be simple, but it is realistic and achievable – let’s start building kindness ambassadors today!