How to Teach Your Kids That “It’s Cool To Be Kind” with Google.

Sharing is caring!

This post is sponsored by Google. I am part of Forward Influence. The views and opinions expressed, however, are entirely my own. (You can read my full disclosure here.)

October is National Bullying Prevention Month and Google is stepping up in a big way to help families spread Kindness with their “It’s Cool To Be Kind” Campaign.

Bullying has become a real problem in our society today. Especially cyberbullying which has become the #1 Online Safety concerns for teachers (and parents). Can you believe that 71% of students have witnessed bullying and  28% of students have personally experienced bullying? And the scariest statistic says that only 20-30% of students ever notify adults that the bullying is happening.

So how do we help our kids to know what to do when they experience or witness bullying? Well, the first thing is we need to do is to have an open conversation with our kids about it. Since I know that bullying is something my kids are going to have to deal with (especially while they are playing online.) I decided the best course of action was to address it with them. It was in this discussion that I discovered that my kids had already experienced it!?!

Talking to my kids about how to deal with bullies was easy thanks to Google’s free online resource Be Internet Awesome (which you can find here) The Be Internet Awesome site is a multifaceted online resource that has curriculum, family guides and even tips for how to teach your kids to be internet safe and good  “digital citizens”. I love how the Family Guide has discussion points, vocabulary words and activities to use when talking to your kids about internet safety. It really is a great resource and they have a whole part that deals with cyberbullying.

After discussing with my kids what they should do if they happen to encounter a cyberbully I wanted to switch gears and focus on something more positive. The best way to combat cyberbullying is to actively spread kindness.  In addition to their Be Internet Awesome online family resource, Google has a fun free online game called Play Interland Kind Kingdom (check it out here) which my kids loved playing. This game reinforced the concepts of internet safety that we had just talked about, as well as how to deal with cyberbullies and let the kids practice spreading kindness.

However, Google isn’t just stopping with offering online resources for parents to use to help our kids stop bullying and spread kindness they are also running a cool campaign that I am soo excited to be a part of. The campaign is called “It’s cool to be kind”. For this campaign, Google is challenging us to choose to be positive digital citizens. we do this by living the golden rule of treating others as we would want to be treated thus spreading kindness across the web.

As a part of this campaign I was challenged to do an act of kindness online and then challenge at least 3 friends to also do an act of kindness online within the next 48 hours. Check out my Instagram post –>HERE<– to see what I did for my act of kindness.  I love this challenge because I know that my children are watching and as I did my Kindness acts my kids knew what I was doing and they were inspired to do acts of kindness themselves.  Talk about #MOM win!

I invite all of you to check out and use Google’s Be Internet Awesome Site. Introduce your kids to Play Interland to practice internet safety and experience the fun of spreading kindness. And lastly, I would invite you to join me in participating in Google’s “It’s Cool To Be Kind” challenge by doing an act of kindness online then tagging 3 friends to join the fun.

If you liked this post then check out these: (click on the photo to go to the post)