Random Act of Kindness
I was honoured to be asked by the wonderful Ripple Kindness Project to share a Random Act of Kindness that I had performed during Kindness Week! … I appreciate that was quite some time ago – but with all that’s been going on in our crazy world right now, it’s taken me a while to upload this! I love reading random acts of kindness that people have performed, especially children, who are our future! Whilst, I could think of many that I had performed myself, I decided to share one that my son had done! See here below for link to the article and in notes below:
“As you may know I am the creator of Henry & Henrietta Heartbeat, the two main characters in the wider Heartbeat family devised to educate children about the importance of kindness and it’s multiple benefits in a fun and relatable way!
So whilst I appreciate you had asked for me to tell a story of where I myself have performed a random act of kindness, of which I can think of a few… I wanted to share a story from one of my children. Given the nature of my work and the books and characters that I am working with each day, kindness and empathy are topics often raised and discussed in our household. This is something that I encourage and am incredibly happy about… I also feel very lucky to have both children in a school that prioritises kindness as a topic and highly respected and rewarded quality.
So as a little indicator that The Heartbeat family concept does work as a project and children do enjoy learning lessons from them and actioning, I’ll tell a little story from my 8 year old son.
As we were sat at the kitchen table talking about kindness and how we can be kinder to people and show them that actually ‘it’s cool to be kind,’ which is the motto of the Heartbeat family, my son told us a lovely little story.
A simple yet powerful little story, which I’ve chosen as it shows how acts of kindness can be so easy, and so small yet how the power to make a tremendously positive impact. It’s the small things….
The scenario was at school – where I’m sure you acknowledge that the playground can be a bit of a minefield for some children… there’s the cool crew, the sporty crew, the louder, the quieter crew and then there are the children who aren’t always sure where they fit in and can often be left hovering around the edges, sometimes alone.
It was a regular break time at school, the sun was out fortunately, (not always a given) so the football crew were really excited to be able to get stuck into as much of a game as they could before break was over. My son, who is an avid and good footballer couldn’t wish to be doing anything better than being fully immersed in the game doing his utmost to score, to win, to play as much as he possibly could. There were different groups of children occupying themselves in different ways, as expected, around the playing fields and gardens, everyone enjoying themselves. It was then, in the midst of a tackle that my son caught sight, out of the corner of his eye, one of the new boys kicking his feet along the edge of the grass, looking to the ground and occasionally up to the boys playing football.
Now, whilst the football boys play regularly together so have their sort of unsaid system and strategics, my son jogged off to the boy on his own, at the sidelines, took his hand and lead him back over to the game. He announced to the crew that his boy would be playing with them now….
And that was it! That’s all it takes. That small random act of kindness, other than making me hugely proud as a mummy, would have changed that boys day.”
See it really doesn’t take much – to help!
