I came across #thekindnessrockproject on a fellow Odyssey contributor, Marissa Sara Matsuzaki's, article back in August I was instantly drawn to the article for several reasons. You see, just a few weeks prior I had had a conversation with a fellow mom. We talked about the challenges of raising kids in the modern age and in summary we both shared the same sentiment, if we raised self-sufficient, productive and kind young adults, we’ve done our jobs.

Now to some that may seem that we’ve set a low bar but of course we expect for and hope for more out of our kids but the Kindness Rock Project highlights why this is at least our minimum. In today’s day and age with all that’s been going on; “mass shootings, violent divisive rhetoric, racial division and political unrest, a little kindness goes a long way. But as a mom, it’s even bigger than that. The Kindness Rock Project is a wonderful opportunity to teach our little ones how to be better so that we really can be hopeful in our future and that it will again get better.

Here are some tips on how to maximize this opportunity:

Make this a fun arts and crafts project to complete with your little ones.

If you make this an arts and craft project, you allow your kids to have fun, while doing something that absolutely rocks (pun intended). They feel good about spreading the affirmative words and kindness to others.

Make this a learning opportunity

Depending on the age of your children, you can 100% make this an opportunity to learn. My daughter is 5 years old and when we did the project together, we talked about why it was so important to do this. What bullying was, what instance of unkindness looked like. Now she’s five so it was at a very basic level but she sounded out the word kind and taught herself pretty much how to spell it.

Make this an open dialogue

The real beauty in this is it gives you an opportunity to allow your kids to share with you. They may tell you of instances of bullying they’ve witnessed and instances of bullying that they’ve experienced. You can also emphasize why it’s important not to be a bully yourself. Once again my daughter is only five but when she was four she went through a very unfortunate experience.

For a little shy of six months, she was bullied. Now she was the only child with two parents that African American/Black, so, unfortunately, the easiest thing to pick on and the one thing that had the biggest impact "was the color of her skin". Now I understand that these are just kids and was not necessarily racially motivated, but I felt that I failed as a parent because it went on for so long but since it was intermittent, there were sporadic clues along the way that I could have addressed had I fully understood what was going on.

Now once we realized what was going on we went to town affirming her. Telling her words of kindness and letting her know that no one can define her. She defines herself. Hence www.facebook.com/ucannotdefineme was born. And doing the Kindness Project again gave us an opportunity to show her positive images such as the Baroque-Inspired Portraits Of Black Girls which Highlighted their Amazing Natural Hair to let her know how amazing and beautiful we know she is.

Now I have also recorded a basic tutorial sharing some tips and tricks on how to complete your own Rock Project should you want to embark on this project. Until next time, make sure you spread a little kindness to everyone you meet today.