For example, someone is being unkind and they are being unkind to other children. If we take a look at it, there can be a lot that is going on. This one here is from my teacher's perspective, looking at all the different parts. Here's a child who's unkind to others, children in the class and when we talk about it, you'll see that the other children are also being unkind and they're supposed to be well, we don't think of it that way. But if we look at what they're doing, that is being unkind. They're avoiding the person they're calling, when they get together with other students, they're being mean.

When we look at perhaps what's going on with parents, then we'll see that they're unkind and we might think that's not being unkind but a discipline, that's teaching. We'll come up with ways to describe what we're doing that isn't using that word unkind but when we really look at it the way we might be disciplining or the way we might be teaching is teaching our child to be unkind,

 One example, it's a sad one, but I think it's very clear, I don't know if you've seen this, but when one child hits their sibling, lightly slap their hand and tell them to not hit each other. What does that child learn? If someone is not listening then you should hit him or slap them or if a child doesn’t know that hitting their sibling is being unkind.

Like I said, it gets a little tricky because like in that example of a child being unkind to other children at school, and those children can say things to that child being unkind or that child is mean, they start labeling this child and start to call them by that. Doesn't that make sense if we look at other relationships, perhaps at work, perhaps with our siblings, our adult siblings, or our parents will find that? We use the stick that we accuse them of as a way to protect ourselves and to keep from being hurt by their stick. And this is one of those unconscious things that we do and we don't really look at it.

 I'm trying to at least bring out today as a possibility for you to think about and to deeply consider. I know someone who is really struggling with their neighbor, and their neighbor had adult children that were taking up all the parking along the road and when they wanted things that felt unreasonable. The neighbor was mowing their lawn and the neighbor was doing that so the lawns could look better together, so they'd be on the same height. That could be considered something kind, but that's not what the other person wanted, so she would get frustrated and angry and try to be kind and understand but then, she's just trying and we unconsciously bait people with the same stick we're doing. She was trying to express that kindness in ways that they become manipulative instead of being kind.

This is something we've grown up with 'cause as children, we really aren't able to meet those needs internally, and when we look to our adults, all those things that we learn without consciously learning, we pick up on these same patterns. There are things that I think people say that's genetic. They have a genetic predisposition for behaving this way or having this kind of response and I believe that there are some cases out there.

I would not be surprised as we go through life's journey and down the hundreds of years as we get more research and can be very hard to be responsible for our own feelings because if we feel like we're responsible for it, we truly expect to express kindness back and we tell our children to express kindness in return.

 Children are great by their very nature and it is our opportunity, our privilege and our responsibility to raise them.