Being Kind in an Unkind World

This has been a tough month for my family. The kind where it leaves your heart a little broken. This is my husbands' toughest month and we are feeling the lasting effects that he is going through with his PTSD and coping. He is just getting by. This is a season we go through every year since his diagnosis. My children already endure tough lives as they’ve had to experience being bullied.

I'd like to share a story or life lesson taught to me. It's about a touching speech my second-grade teacher, Mrs. English, delivered about being nice and kind to everyone.  She did not stop there... she made us (or at least me) understand that some situations are completely out of our control but what we do and how we do it can make all the difference to one person. We are all the same in the fact that we can lift people up or tear them down...So, what will you be choosing every day? This was a summary of that day. There was a girl whom no one wanted to be friends with because she smelled differently. Honestly, I was included in that group until I really listened to this brave kind-hearted teacher. It was not the girl's fault... she did not have running water and items needed to stay clean.  She lived with unfortunate circumstances. She was a great person. Her family did not have the means to provide what we as a class took for granted of already having. This is one of those moments that stay with you for life. It changed how I saw and treated people. It changed what I was willing to do for someone else. It shaped the philosophy I still carry with me today. I will always leave the world a little better than it found me.
Being a mom, I practice and teach kindness to my kids. I want them to be kind humans. I feel it is not enough to teach them but you also must let them see you being kind in many ways as well. As a family, one way we show kindness is by making a pot of food and feeding homeless and at-risk people on the fourth Tuesday of every month. I want them to be comfortable around all people. I want them to be grateful for what they have and understand that there are always going to be people who have less and who have more. That is okay. What they do to help others with what they have is what is going to matter the most. They go through their clothes and toys and we find amazing places and people whom can love them better than we were. As a family, our budget is not big but there is still plenty that can be done to be kind to other people.
I realized last month that I must have missed a huge piece of teaching kindness. Both of my school-age children have been bullied to the point that it greatly affects them. Our oldest is a teenage girl in tenth grade. The school called me because she had to leave after taking the meanness for almost a year- it finally affected her enough that she could not function throughout her day.  I see her as beautiful because I am her mom. Others also see her as gorgeous both inside and out. I am always stopped and complimented on her appearance and behaviors. She started going to this particular school in 7th grade and now she has moved up to the high school. There are two girls whose actions seem to be embellished out of jealousy of my daughter. They went to every group of friends she had made and put our daughter down. They sat with them, filling their ears with our non-sense of our daughter being weird and many other awful things. She started believing the things they were saying until she finally got the courage to speak up. Her guidance counselors helped to make school a place of enjoyment for her. They used the technology from camera and audio systems in the school to go back to as many moments as they could. They wanted to ease our daughter's already tough world. They wanted to stop these girls from moving on to someone else. It got worse for a couple of weeks after both girls got into trouble and since then, they've left our daughter alone. I had to have a conversation with her about how being kind does not mean letting other people treat you poorly. She did not want to be 'mean' to anyone. I taught her to stand up for herself and that does not mean you are unkind. You can be kind and not let people treat you a way that you should not be treated.
A few weeks later, my son started a phase of not wanting to go to school. I had to drag him there. Next day, the same thing. And, it continued. His anxiety was high, which also happens in tough moments with his dad dealing with coping from severe PTSD. As a mom, I feel it is hard to figure out when there is something else going on with him. He doesn't talk outwardly like both of our girls. He processes internally and quietly with anger moments. I asked him what happened at school. He finally told me a child knocked him down and shoved his face in the snow. It really scared him so when the kid started charging to do it again, my son hit him, which in turn made the other kid hit our son so hard that his face turned red. This was one of his friends so it made it harder for our son to sort out. After he told me, he started to cry and felt bad about hitting his friend. My son's spacer fell off his teeth because he was hit so hard.  As I told him that I am sorry this happened to him, he told me it was ok. I looked at him and yet another lesson learned on how kind and being friends should not hurt. I gave him all the ways to use his voice and people he trusts at school to go to help him. He did not want to get his friend into trouble so he did not say anything. He hugged me, with a better understanding that being kind matters and so does standing up for yourself. 
I do not remember ever going to school and kids being so mean. I hope kindness is something that each one of you reading this teach others. Being kind impacts all the people around you and standing up for yourself is not unkind. Our families already deal with the unkind effects and aftermath of war, and my kids should not have to endure more unkindness. I am their mom and I am so proud every day that I see kindness and kind acts coming from them even when the world is not always dealing kindly with them.  We will continue to share our kindness, changing the world one person and situation at a time.
Love and Laughter
The Johnsons