Nice Is Comfortable. Kind Is Truth.

Why the kind choice sometimes looks ‘mean’ — a parenting story.

*This is a repost from my original blog from a few years back. I felt so strongly about it, I wanted to make sure you saw it.

Nice Is Comfortable. Kind Is Truth.

I love being nice. It’s comfortable, and it is accepted and encouraged by today’s culture. Right? No. I’d much rather be kind than nice. All. Day. Long. Why? Your ‘Niceness’ Is Lying to the People You Love. Now I know that sounds harsh, but sometimes we need to hear the harsh truth.

So if I’m being nice and my little boy says, “Mommy, I want to go play in the street.” I tell him no, and now he’s bawling like crazy! He’s telling me I’m a “mean Mommy!”

Yep! But, isn’t it all about perception? He thinks I’m being mean when in reality I’m being kind. I am saving him from himself.

Today’s Culture dictates that We Should be Nice

Do you think I’m being facetious with that story? I am or at least maybe I am, so I’ll tell you another story that isn’t quite so self-evident because everybody knows you can’t let your child play in the street since he could get run over.

For anyone who has teenagers that are challenging, you’ll be able to relate to this story. When my son turned 13, a teenager, a switch went off somewhere. All I kept thinking is “what happened to my sweet little boy?”

He was talking back, and he was telling me I didn’t know anything. In addition, he was convinced that every other parent on the planet let their child go and do whatever they wanted — except his mom (me! I was “mean”).

If you are or have ever been a single parent, you can certainly relate to this….

By the time my son turned 16, he was very hard to control. He still had a sweet heart, but there was this part of him that would refuse to behave and kept getting into trouble.

Age 17 rolled around and he just wouldn’t come home sometimes, or he’d skip school. He was very disrespectful at this point. I wallowed in it, and I wondered what happened to my sweet boy? Where was he, also what was I doing wrong?

Here’s where Nice Is Comfortable. Kind Is Truth. comes in…

Someone gave me a book on how to treat a teenager. I was at my wits end, so I opened the book and shuffled through some of the sections. The book told me to stand my ground. Say it once, and do not repeat myself because we all need to learn that actions have consequences…good or bad. And if my teenager can’t respect the rules then you have no alternative but to lock him out of the house. He must learn that actions have consequences.

What? NO!! I just couldn’t do it. That would be mean. I couldn’t do that. But as the old adage says, desperate times calls for desperate measures.

That summer I was traveling out of town with one of my best girlfriends. I told my son that I was going. I also told him that things were going to change, and if he couldn’t respect me and my rules that I was going to lock him out of the house.

HIS choice was to just not come home. I texted him the day before that I was leaving the next morning. No response.

So, I did what any KIND mother would do, I changed the garage door code, locked all the doors and windows and left on a 5 day trip. My son texted after I got to the airport and said he was on his way home. I told him too late that I was already gone.

Locking My Son Out of the House Was the Kindest Thing I Could Have Ever Done For Him

Wake up call! My son had to stay with friends or wherever he had been for the past few days. He had to rely on others. He had no fresh, clean clothes, no free meals, no where to go home to. Nice is comfortable. Kind is truth.

His response was to break into the house, but it scared him enough. After that things began to change. Not overnight, although he was much nicer immediately, but gradually my son became more polite in his dealings with me.

He was polite and considerate, and he had learned a valuable lesson: people will treat you how you treat them. I also learned a valuable lesson and that is people will treat you as bad as I tolerate! I was tolerating this behavior and teaching my son that it was ok because there was no consequences for his bad behavior. Nice is comfortable. Kind is Truth.

Don’t Judge Other’s Actions Too Quickly

When I had read that book I mentioned about parenting a teenager and it told me to lock my son out of the house, and I thought that was just downright mean. In the end, it was not. It was the kindest and most loving thing I could have done for him.

It’s one thing to just not come home when you don’t want to, but it is completely another to know that you don’t have a home to go to. I gave him that glimpse. Would I have eventually locked him out for good if things didn’t change? Who knows? Like I said, we tolerate things, and sometimes we ourselves don’t even understand how long or how much we will tolerate things.

The situation had become dire. It was a lesson that he had to learn, and if he didn’t learn it while he was still living with me, he was going to learn it in a worse way when he was out on his own.

Today my son is loved by so many people. He is kind-hearted and nice as well as intelligent and giving, and he is so cherished by many people most especially his employer. I’m not chalking it all up to that one incident, but I do know that in this case my kindness sure appeared to be mean….besides, my fiance’ was in town, and I had him checking on my son, but my son didn’t know that. It was all good.

Being Nice is Being In Your Comfort Zone, but it’s not Always Kind. Nice is comfortable. Kind is Truth.

Many of us highly dislike adversity. We’ll say anything to be “nice” and avoid confrontation. That is comfortable. It is not necessarily being kind and doing and/or saying the right thing. Is that you? It was (and still can be) me sometimes. I feel ya. But I am much more aware of what I will and won’t tolerate, so that is progress.

Ask yourself, are you being nice because it’s a comfortable place to be or should you be kind and not necessarily comfortable?

Be very tenacious and think a lot about this as it is an important and significant distinction.

What is your kindness story? How do you see the difference between nice and kind? Share your comments.

Need a little courage so you can step into your kindness? You will find it here: Courage Isn’t Loud – It’s Obedience in Motion

Or if you are so ready to be kind to all your loved ones by stepping up in courage take a look at this and see if it is right for you: 30-day Be Courageous Printable Bible Study with Devotional Journal + BONUS: Printable 30-Be Courageous Challenge Calendar

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