How to Raise a Child Who Is Kind to Others: What the Research Says

Kindness is one of the qualities parents
most want for their children — and one
of the most commonly approached in ways
that are less effective than the research
suggests. Telling children to be kind,
rewarding kind behavior with stickers,
and lecturing about the importance of
treating others well are understandable
approaches. They are also, by themselves,
insufficient.

The research on kindness and prosocial
behavior in children is specific and
actionable. This article covers what
kindness actually is developmentally,
what the evidence shows builds it
genuinely, and what the daily practices
are that make the biggest difference.

What Kindness Actually Is

Kindness is not simply the performance
of kind acts. Research on prosocial
behavior — the umbrella term for
voluntary behavior intended to benefit
others — identifies several distinct
components that develop at different
rates and through different mechanisms:

Empathy — the capacity to understand
and share another person’s emotional
experience. Research consistently
finds that empathy is the motivational
foundation of genuine kindness —
children who feel with others
are more motivated to help them.

Prosocial motivation — the genuine
desire to benefit others, independent
of external reward or social approval.
Research by C. Daniel Batson on
altruism finds that genuine prosocial
motivation — acting for the benefit
of others rather than for personal gain —
is associated with more consistent
and more genuine kind behavior
than externally motivated helping.

Prosocial skills — the specific
social and emotional skills required
to translate kind intentions into
kind actions: noticing when someone
needs help, knowing what kind
of help to offer, and being
able to provide it effectively.

Research by Nancy Eisenberg at
Arizona State University — one
of the most prolific researchers
on children’s prosocial development —
finds that genuine kindness requires
all three components: the feeling
(empathy), the motivation (prosocial
concern), and the skill (prosocial behavior).
Developing kindness in children
means attending to all three.

How Kindness Develops

Research on prosocial development
across childhood identifies a
consistent developmental sequence:

Infancy: Even very young infants
show rudimentary prosocial responses —
distress at another’s distress,
preference for prosocial over
antisocial agents in looking-time
studies. Research by Kiley Hamlin
at the University of British Columbia
finds that infants as young as
six months prefer individuals
who help over those who hinder —
suggesting that prosocial evaluation
is present from very early in development.

Toddlerhood: Between ages one
and three, children begin showing
genuine prosocial behavior —
spontaneously helping others,
sharing objects, offering comfort
to distressed others. Research
by Felix Warneken at Harvard
finds that children as young
as fourteen months spontaneously
help others achieve their goals —
without any instruction or reward —
suggesting an intrinsic prosocial
motivation that is present very early.

Preschool years: Between ages
three and six, prosocial behavior
becomes more sophisticated —
children begin to consider others’
needs and perspectives, to share
more equitably, and to engage
in more complex forms of helping.
Research finds that emotion understanding —
the capacity to understand what
others are feeling — is one
of the strongest predictors of
prosocial behavior at this age.

School age: Between ages six
and twelve, kindness becomes
more deliberate and more
context-sensitive — children
develop the capacity to consider
the appropriateness of different
kinds of help in different situations,
to balance their own needs with
others’, and to show kindness
in more subtle and sophisticated ways.

What the Research Shows Builds Genuine Kindness

Empathy development. Research
consistently finds that empathy —
the capacity to understand and
share others’ emotional experience —
is the strongest predictor of
prosocial behavior in children.
Parents who build empathy —
through emotion coaching, through
directing attention to others’
feelings, through reading fiction
and discussing characters’ experiences —
are building the motivational
foundation of genuine kindness.

Modeling kindness genuinely.
Research on observational learning
and prosocial development finds
that children’s kindness is
significantly shaped by observing
how the adults around them
treat others — not in staged
or performed ways, but in
the ordinary moments of daily life.

The parent who helps a neighbor
without being asked, who is
genuinely warm to strangers,
who speaks about others with
generosity rather than judgment —
is providing some of the most
powerful kindness education available.
What children watch matters
more than what children hear.

Inductive discipline — explaining
the effects of behavior on others.
Research by Martin Hoffman on
moral development finds that
inductive discipline — drawing
children’s attention to the
effects of their behavior on
others — is the most effective
discipline approach for building
genuine prosocial motivation.

“When you took that without
asking, it hurt your friend’s
feelings — they felt like
you didn’t care about them.
How do you think they felt?”

This approach builds genuine
prosocial concern by connecting
the child’s behavior to its
real effects on real people —
which is a more powerful motivator
than any external reward.

Providing genuine opportunities
to help. Research by Warneken
and Tomasello on children’s
prosocial development finds
that children’s intrinsic
motivation to help is strengthened
by genuine opportunities to
help — and weakened by excessive
external reward for helping.

The child who is given genuine
opportunities to contribute —
to help a younger sibling,
to assist a parent with a
real task, to contribute to
a community — develops stronger
prosocial motivation than one
whose helping is always rewarded
with external prizes.

Avoiding excessive reward for
kindness. Research on the
overjustification effect —
including foundational work
by Mark Lepper at Stanford —
finds that rewarding behavior
that is already intrinsically
motivated reduces the intrinsic
motivation. Children who are
paid or rewarded for kind
behavior learn to be kind
when rewards are available —
not because they genuinely care.

Verbal acknowledgment — “I noticed
how kind you were just then” —
is different from tangible reward
and does not produce the same
overjustification effect. Noticing
and naming kind behavior verbally
and specifically is effective.
Rewarding it with stickers or
prizes is less so.

Building a kindness identity.
Research on identity and prosocial
behavior — including work by
Christopher Bryan at the University
of Chicago — finds that framing
kindness as an identity —
“you are a kind person” rather
than “that was a kind thing to do” —
produces more consistent prosocial
behavior. Children who see
kindness as part of who they
are act on it more consistently
than those for whom it is
simply a behavior they sometimes perform.

Family values and community contribution.
Research on moral development
and family values finds that
children who grow up in families
where kindness is an explicit
value — named, discussed, and
practiced — develop stronger
prosocial motivation than those
for whom it is assumed but unstated.
And research on community involvement
finds that genuine experience
of helping others — volunteering,
community service, contributing
to something beyond the family —
builds prosocial motivation in
ways that instruction alone cannot.

What Does Not Build Genuine Kindness

Rewarding kind behavior with
tangible prizes. Research on
intrinsic motivation finds that
tangible external rewards for
prosocial behavior reduce rather
than build genuine kindness motivation.
If children are kind because
they are rewarded for it,
they will be less kind when
the rewards are absent.

Forcing performed kindness.
Research on authentic versus
performed prosocial behavior
finds that requiring children
to perform kindness they do
not feel — forced sharing,
compelled apologies, required
expressions of care — produces
compliance without genuine
prosocial motivation and may
reduce authentic kindness over time.

Modeling unkindness. Research
on observational learning is
unambiguous: children learn
how to treat others primarily
by watching how the adults
around them treat others.
A parent who speaks unkindly
about neighbors, who is harsh
to service workers, or who
treats family members with
contempt is providing a more
powerful lesson in unkindness
than any kindness instruction can overcome.

Try This This Week

Practice 1 — The Kindness Noticing Practice
What it is: A daily practice
of specifically noticing and
naming kind behavior — building
both kindness identity and
the positive narrative about
kindness that motivates more of it.

How to do it: Once each day,
find a specific, genuine moment
of kindness to name — in
your child, in yourself,
or in others:

“I noticed you helped your
brother without being asked.
That is exactly what kind
people do.”
“I saw you include that
child who was alone. That
took real kindness.”
“I want to tell you about
something kind I did today —
and how it made me feel.”

Keep the observation specific,
genuine, and identity-focused:
“that is what kind people do”
rather than “good job.”

Why it works: Research on
identity and prosocial behavior
finds that connecting kind
acts to a kind identity —
“that is who you are” —
produces more consistent prosocial
behavior than praising the
act alone. The Kindness Noticing
Practice builds this identity
through consistent, specific, daily observation.

Practice 2 — The Contribution Practice
What it is: A regular, genuine
opportunity for your child
to contribute to something
beyond themselves — building
prosocial motivation through
the direct experience of making
a difference.

How to do it: This week,
find one genuine opportunity
for your child to help:

Helping a neighbor or elderly
family member with something real.
Contributing to a food bank
or community organization.
Doing something kind for
a friend or classmate who is struggling.
A family project that serves others.

Make it genuine — not a
token gesture but a real
contribution that makes a
real difference. Talk about
it afterward: “How did it
feel to help? What difference
do you think it made?”

Why it works: Research on
prosocial behavior and intrinsic
motivation finds that the
direct experience of helping —
of seeing one’s own effort
make a genuine difference
in another person’s life —
is one of the most powerful
builders of prosocial motivation.
The Contribution Practice provides
this experience deliberately
and consistently.

Practice 3 — The Empathy Moment
What it is: A daily practice
of directing your child’s
attention to others’ emotional
experiences — building the
empathic awareness that research
identifies as the motivational
foundation of genuine kindness.

How to do it: Once each day,
find a natural opportunity
to direct your child’s attention
to someone else’s experience:

During daily life: “Look at
that person — they seem really
tired. I wonder what kind
of day they’ve had.”
After a social interaction:
“How do you think your friend
felt when that happened?”
During a book or film:
“What is that character feeling
right now? What would you
feel in their situation?”

Keep the tone curious rather
than instructional. You are
building a habit of other-awareness,
not conducting an empathy lesson.

Why it works: Research on
empathy development and prosocial
behavior finds that the consistent
practice of directing attention
to others’ emotional states —
noticing, wondering, speculating —
builds the empathic awareness
that is the strongest motivational
foundation of genuine kindness.
The Empathy Moment makes this
practice a consistent feature
of daily family life.

The Bottom Line

Genuine kindness is not produced
by instruction, reward, or
compulsion. It grows through
the accumulated experience
of feeling with others, of
watching kindness modeled,
of having the effects of
one’s behavior on others
made real and visible, and
of discovering — through genuine
contribution — that one’s
actions can make a real
difference in another person’s life.

The child who grows up in
a family where kindness is
noticed and named, where
others’ feelings are attended to,
where genuine contribution
is valued and practiced,
and where the adults model
genuine warmth toward others —
that child develops the kindness
that is not a performance
but a genuine expression
of who they are.

That is the kindness that lasts.

Sources

Eisenberg, N., & Fabes, R. A. (1998).
Prosocial development.
In W. Damon & N. Eisenberg (Eds.),
Handbook of Child Psychology, Vol. 3. Wiley.

Warneken, F., & Tomasello, M. (2008).
Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic
tendencies in 20-month-olds.
Developmental Psychology,
44(6), 1785–1788.

Hoffman, M. L. (2000).
Empathy and Moral Development.
Cambridge University Press.

Bryan, C. J., Master, A., &
Walton, G. M. (2014).
“Helping” versus “being a helper.”
Child Development, 85(5),
1836–1842.