5 Practical Steps to Raising Uncommon Kids

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Everyone’s looking for a quick fix these days.

In a world where companies are creating ways for us to maximize our every minute, our culture as a whole is suffering when it comes to relationships and connections with each other.

Sure, we can see pictures of our friends’ kids from across the country on Facebook, search up recipes in an instant on Google and pay for things right from our smartphone, but we’ve lost the ability to truly connect with people.

And I’m not just talking about people we know, but those we’ve yet to meet as well. Because when we find ourselves lost in a screen all day, you fail to open up the possibility of impromptu human interactions.

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For our kids to care about others:

• They need to know there are others to care about.
• They need to understand the world doesn’t revolve around them.
• They need to believe they can make a difference not just in the world, but in their neighborhood and most importantly inside their own homes.

After all, if our kids don’t know how to show love to the people they love the most, why would they care about people they don’t even know?

So may I suggest what may seem like a reverse approach to helping the world: lay a foundation of love within your own home first.

Your kids may say they feel loved and I’d bet they’d even admit they love you and their siblings, but do they show it? Before we can be compassionate towards others, we need to practice within the fours walls of our home.

In my book, Raising Uncommon Kids, I talk about 12 characteristics that will help your family on the road to compassion. At the end of each chapter, I include a “Make it Practical” section that outlines exactly how to put those principles into practice.

Actions speak louder than words, so let’s start today by learning 5 practical steps anyone can take to raise uncommon kids.

5 Practical Steps to Raising Uncommon Kids:

1. Create a family mission statement. Once you do, display it prominently in your home where every member of your family can not only see it, but refer back to it often.
2. Re-design your home. Go through each room of your house and have each family member call out the thing they like most about that space, whether tangible or intangible. Strive to make everyone’s voice heard and represented in some way.
3. Parents switch roles with kids for a day. Want to help your kids experience what it’s really like to be you? Switch roles with them for a day. While children are typically thrilled at the prospect of ordering around their parents, the tides typically turn once they discover the new balance of work and play. Even if you don’t do this for an entire day, make sure to save time to celebrate the switching back of roles and debrief what everyone experienced.
4. Let your children deal with their mistakes. Don’t be so quick to clean up all your children’s messes for them. Think about it. It’s better to help your kids process their flubs while they’re living with you in their school years than to raise them in a bubble and then send them off to college without a hint of what the world will throw at them.
5. Encourage your kids to do one of their sibling’s chores one day. Explain how a simple act of kindness can break the battle cycle siblings often find themselves in.

Being uncommon isn’t quick or easy, but it is worthwhile. Knowing that you’re living life on your own terms not only allows your family’s heart to be full, but more importantly, fills you with the freedom for that love to overflow to others in need. When you model compassion in your own home, your kids will begin to understand what that could look like outside the walls of your home.

So what are you waiting for? Go on, be uncommon today!

Purchase Raising Uncommon Kids HERE.

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