Katherine Rivera-Spoljaric, MD (Guest): Hello, I'm Katherine Rivera-Spoljaric, and I am a Pediatric Pulmonologist at St. Louis Children's Hospital. And I am a mom doc.

Melanie Cole (Host): Hey, welcome to MomDocs. The podcast from St. Louis Children's Hospital. I'm Melanie Cole and with the holiday season here, now is such a great opportunity to teach our children the importance of kindness and empathy, because it seems like there's not a lot of that going around right now, and we need to teach them about giving and putting these things into action.

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric, I'm so glad to have you with us. This is a really good topic. First of all, how do you explain kindness, empathy to a child? What even words do we use?

Katherine Rivera-Spoljaric, MD (Guest): This is interesting because I've had to explain this to my children every year on the holidays when we try to do kindness activities. So, it's a simple as saying being friendly, being compassionate, caring, being graceful, loving, considerate of others.

Host: Those are good words to use because they can kind of understand that kindness is a, is a bit of an abstract. So, it's not always easy, but kids know kindness when they see it. They know when somebody who comes up to them has kind eyes or is nice to them or a grandparent. They understand that and we're talking really across the age spectrum. So, it's going to be different for different ages, obviously. So how do we teach it? Give us some tried and true tips.

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric: Well, I think first we need to model it. If we're kind ourselves, then the children will see it as a perfect example of what kindness means. And sometimes where we might be less than graceful. It's always showing, going back and saying, I wish I would have been kinder.

I would have said things in a nicer way or this and that, but saying please, saying thank you. Being nice when ordering out at a restaurant, being kind to the servers, being kind to your friends. Being kind to strangers, smiling. I think it starts with something as simple as that. And then it can evolve into getting a little bit more complex and coming up with random acts of kindness with your children and family activities that you can do together.

Host: Beautifully said, I agree with you and Doctor in this age and social media, obviously, these kids are, you know, dialed in to TikTok and Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, all these things. And we're seeing so much meanness in the country today. How can we teach our kids empathy for those in underserved communities, for those that are being marginalized right now, even by people in positions of power, we're seeing meanness and cruelty.

And I, as a parent of a 21 and a 19 year old have been working very hard in the last bunch of years to really get my kids to see that other people are suffering and we need to help them in any way that we can. What's your opinion on ways to show our kids this stuff without disturbing them, but yet teaching them that, that's how we kind of a jumping off point where we can learn to help those that need it?

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric: I'm a huge believer that education and exposure eliminates sometimes bias and unkind behavior. And there's, depending on the age of the children, of course there's books, there's movies, that you can watch or read with your children that can tell stories about things that have happened of people or families in unfortunate circumstances. And that can initiate a conversation with your children where you can start saying, how would you feel, what would make you feel better? What would make you feel sad? And it kind of can start that communication about seeing the stories from different also points of view. If you feel comfortable, you can take your children to places where they can see things in person.

So, I can give you a little bit of an anecdote. Years ago, I took my children to the crisis nursery. That was before COVID, when we could visit places. And I took them there because we collected toys to give to the children at the St. Louis Crisis Nursery, which is a wonderful charity here.

And they had the opportunity to go and walk through and look at the place. They were young. In the single digits, all three of them and they left and they said, so children have to come here and spend the night here. And they were able to see at a very young age, how different life can be, depending on the circumstances that you're born in or surrounded with.

And I think that exposure, if it could be live or it could be through books or pictures or sharing stories, things on the news, you can even use social media for good. Right. You can find stories that are shared in different venues and social media and have discussions. Have discussions at the dinner table about those stories, at bedtime, during your bedtime routine about those stories and what they think and then give them your opinion and then brainstorm ways you can help.

Host: I loved your story. And thank you for sharing that. I did something similar at a soup kitchen that serves homeless, where you waitress. And so you are actually giving the dignity of waitressing and both my kids, we did this and I taught them how to be a server. They came back really, really thinking a lot about dignity and kindness and empathy. So, give us some other examples of things we can do with their friends, with their teachers, because it's really something that's community-wide and if we pay it forward, and if we do random acts of kindness or things that we know might help somebody smile, it does then go forward to maybe something else that will be nice for someone else. So give us a few other examples of things you'd like us to do with our kids.

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric: Well, I can tell you examples of things I've done. I think people need to come up with ideas that fit their family and actually the children are the best at coming up with those ideas. So.

Host: That's a great point.

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric: Yeah. So, around Christmas time and around the beginning of school, we do family random acts of kindness, and then we make lists of what we want to do for Christmas time. I usually do 12. I didn't know why, I guess because of the 12 days of Christmas, but, we do the 12 days of kindness or the 12 acts of kindness. And we make a list together. We've done this for years, of the things that we could do together as a family. Last year, we only did five because it was a little bit more tricky, but when you can pick out a number, it doesn't have to be, it could be three, whatever number works for you.

And just plan it out as a family. And we've done things like going to the animal shelter. And we read books to the dogs. That was kind of funny. But it was really cute and my kids loved it and it showed them compassion for animals. And it was a great activity that we did. We have done things as simple as taking coins and taping them to vending machines.

One time we went to the dollar store and hid dollars around the store. And then, things at school. So I gave them a list of things they could do at school, like, smile at 12 different people. I give them a number just so they can kind of get excited about the activity.

We also wrote letters like thank you notes for the workers, the staff at the school that are not teachers like the administrative staff and the maintenance staff, and the people that help in the street. We did that. We did other activities with the teachers in terms of saying thank you.

We've done things like returning the carts at the parking lot at Target or places like that. We go around and say, let's just find the carts that people just left and bring them back to little thing where the carts go. We have done, I'll also pay for the person behind you at the McDonald's line.

So we've done that. Let the person behind you at the store, go in front of you. So we've done that. And a lot of these are activities that my children have come up with. We have actually the soup kitchen in, but my children have been too young till recently to go there. So I think we're going to incorporate that now that things are getting better with COVID, but that's a great one and I've been watching for it.

Another thing that we did was we volunteered. You can volunteer for many things. You can check out your local listings of places and then just decide to volunteer for something that attracts you and attracts your children. But we volunteered actually at a local charity where they received a lot of donations, but they all come in like huge bags and they don't have enough staff to kind of sort through them.

So that's what we did. And that was very interesting because we were in a warehouse and we had to sort through bags and bags and bags of stuff. And there were toys and clothes and we had to sort them by age and by size and the toys and my children were wanting everything. I was like, no. So we taught him also that it's not about them.

It's about other people. So, we had a fun time sorting through all that. But it also opened their eyes about the needs because there were so many donations and we had a conversation of why people need this. Some people need something as simple as a pacifier, they can't afford it, they can have it and all that was there. So it really, put things into perspective for them.

Host: Wow. What a list of things and bless your heart for teaching your children that well, it really is so important. We've done some similar things and like, you know, blessing bags at the holidays, we put socks and underwear and chapstick and stuff. And we walk around the city of Chicago and we just hand them out.

And, you know, like one Valentine's day I had my son bring a big bag of candy and he just walked up and down the hallways, handing them out to people who he just, you know, as he, he would smile and say happy and he gave it to everybody. So it was really something that taught him that everybody is the same and we all need a little love because he did come back saying that and how good it made him feel.

So Doctor, as we wrap up, and what a lovely episode this is. And we've given so many ideas today for teaching our children kindness and empathy. I'd like you to just reiterate the importance of teaching our children to understand how lucky we are and the benefits of teaching them gratitude so that they can pay it forward with acts of kindness.

Dr. Rivera-Spoljaric: I think kindness is very important because to sound a little cheesy, it does make the world better. It creates a culture of empathy, of happiness, of goodness and in turn, it has a lot of benefits. Actually, I mean, I am a scientist at heart, so it has been studied. There have been studies about how kindness creates pro-social behavior and more empathetic behavior in the future. So even starting with preschoolers can create that type of behavior and that in itself makes children have more self-esteem. People that are kind can be happier, finding that joy in giving to others and also kind people tend to have more friends because people want to be around friendly people, especially friendly children.

So, that promotes their social development and social behavior and makes them healthier. And just happier. And in turn eventually probably build stronger leaders and help kids develop coping mechanisms and resilience.

Host: That is 100% true. And I'm glad you brought up resilience. Thank you so much Doctor for joining us and sharing all your great stories, because I think parents can learn so much from this episode and parents, I hope you'll share this with your friends and family on your social channels. We're learning from the experts at St. Louis Children's Hospital together. And it's not always just about states of disease and conditions. Sometimes it's about our emotional wellbeing and certainly the emotional wellbeing of our children. So I hope you'll share this show with your friends and family. And that concludes another episode of MomDocs with St. Louis Children's Hospital. For more advice and articles, check out the MomDocs website at children'smd.org. I'm Melanie Cole.