Not Liking Everyone is Normal. Being Kind Isn’t Optional. Why is this Important to Teach Young Children?

Oct 12

Written By Lindsay Priest

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I remember my mother telling me that you can love someone and still not like them. I don't think I fully understood what she meant at the time, but now as an adult, I get it. She was talking about people in our lives who have difficult personalities or annoying habits. For example, your boss may be a micromanager who tends to overreact in certain situations (and by "certain situations" I mean "all of them"). Or perhaps your sister gets into lots of fights with her boyfriends because she has trouble communicating effectively with other people? Maybe your best friend is always late for dates because he just doesn't care about being on time for things like that?

We all have difficult people in our lives.

In human relationships, you can't always get what you want. There are people in this world who won't like us, no matter what we do or say. And the fact is, not all of those people are wrong—you may have done something to annoy them or rub them the wrong way. But even if they're right about you (maybe they just don't like your personality or interests), that doesn't mean that as a person, they're good enough to deserve our kindness and respect.

Some people just suck and there's nothing else to it. They're mean-spirited monsters who take great pleasure in hurting others just because they can't stand being happy for themselves for even a second without feeling resentful about it (and then projecting their own unhappiness onto other people). It's important for young children to understand that not everyone is going to like them—or anyone else—and that talking nicely doesn’t necessarily mean someone likes us better; it just means we're being kind!

You can be kind and not like someone.

That's right, you can be a good person without liking everyone you come across. And if this idea is hard for you to accept, then start with yourself! It may be that your own behavior is the thing that needs changing before you are able to accept this concept in others. You don't have to like everyone--but if they're asking for help, or just being nice, or doing something good for someone else, then show them kindness even if they're not your favorite person at the moment.

Not liking everyone is normal.

Do you like everyone? I didn't think so. And that's okay. You don't have to like everyone, but you do have to be kind! We can be kind without liking someone—and it's actually a lot easier than it sounds. Being kind is all about how we treat others, not how we feel about them. In fact, there might even be times when we don't care for another person at all... and yet still choose to accept them for who they are and show them respect anyway. This concept can seem hard for kids at first because many of us don't realize yet that people who are different from us aren't necessarily bad or mean—they're just different! So if any of your children seem confused by this idea (and who wouldn't?), try explaining it like this:

Being kind means treating other people with respect even when they may not deserve our respect (like when someone is acting meanly toward us).
It doesn’t matter why someone else thinks differently than you do; as long as their thoughts don’t hurt anyone else or cause harm to anyone else then those thoughts are valid too!

Practicing kindness with others but standing firm with our boundaries is healthy behavior to teach young children.

Kids learn from us what the world is like. As educators and parents, it's important that we teach our children how to stand firm with boundaries and be kind to others.

If you don't like someone, but you're kind to them anyway, that person will probably think your kindness is insincere or fake. If a child doesn't like another child in school, but always tries to be nice anyway (e.g., by sharing her toys), that other child may start feeling uncomfortable around the first child because she doesn't know why the child acts differently around them, compared to everyone else.

When kids are taught that they must always be kind, even if they don't want to be near someone else or share their possessions with them—or even if they have a hard time tolerating someone else's presence—they'll learn not just about being nice but also about putting up walls between themselves and others when necessary for self-preservation purposes.

A lot of people have a hard time understanding why someone would be kind to someone they don’t like. But it’s important to remember that not liking everyone is normal, the goal of this post was not to tell you how to feel about other people but rather to show you how kindness can still be practiced even when we aren’t feeling friendly towards others.