Welcome to Making Caring Common’s resources for families, parents, and caregivers! We offer activities, tips, resource lists, discussion guides, and more to help you raise caring and ethical children who are concerned about others and the common good.
Raising children in a digital age makes it essential for parents to help them process and think critically about the messages they encounter online, and to consider the impact that their own words and actions can have on others. This resource is designed to support parents and other adults in helping children identify, process, and think critically about online hate speech to help minimize its harmful effects.
Read MoreThis toolkit provides resources to help you support your teen in developing a reflective and caring mindset during the opening days of the school year. It includes conversation starters and other strategies to foster open, supportive, and reflective dialogue between you and your teen that focuses on community and empathy and works to reinforce the values and principles that help create a caring community.
Read MoreHow we talk about things matters. But in our polarized country, how can we express our opinion while leaving room for someone else’s viewpoint? This resource provides six tips for parents and family members to support teens in building and practicing skills that are fundamental to having productive conversations across different points of view. Review these tips before engaging in a challenging conversation with your teen, especially one in which you hold different or conflicting points of view on issues in the news or current events.
Read MoreWe live and are raising children in a time when our lives are impacted by increasingly complex global crises. This resource invites families to explore complex global issues together and to think through how their actions and the actions of leaders can help to promote the common good in times of crisis.
Read MoreThis strategy was designed for educators to use with students in the classroom but can be adapted for use by anyone - including parents or anyone who works with or cares for children and teens.
Read MoreNews and information has never been more accessible for adults—and for children. Though safeguards are available to help shield young people from especially troubling content, it’s inevitable that they will come across disturbing or upsetting news and other content that they may need support to process and understand.
In this guide, parents of middle and high school students will find strategies for reflection, discussion, and more to engage with their children and help them process current events.
Read MorePracticing positive self-talk can be a powerful tool to support mental health, both for you and for your child. When negative thoughts or emotions arise, try this simple exercise to shift the focus to positive self-talk. In the brief steps below, you can use the examples for yourself or for guidance in what to share with your child. Children (including teens) need scaffolding or examples to help guide them in their own processing.
Read MoreFinding things in common with other people can be a powerful way to help kids learn to appreciate and care about people who are different from them. This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring Common can help adults guide kids in identifying things they have in common with others, especially with those who seem different from them.
Read MoreLooking for an easy way to help kids practice talking about their feelings and the feelings of others? This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring Common helps adults use kids favorite stories to begin these conversations.
Read MoreCaring is good for relationships and research suggests that it supports happiness and success! This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring Common helps kids learn the importance of caring by capturing and talking about caring moments.
Read MoreOur Gratitude Scavenger Hunt encourages children to notice people and things to be thankful for. Try making a routine for your family!
Read MoreOur “Gratitude Conversation Cards” encourage family members to talk about what they are thankful for and why. Try to make it a weekly (or daily!) routine for your family.
Read MoreThis fun activity encourages children to recognize people to be grateful for and to show that gratitude the best they can. Expressing thankfulness to other people strengthens relationships and boosts happiness — and it can be an especially powerful way to cope with stress and remind ourselves of the things we take for granted. Pick at least one day in the week and try to make this a routine for your family.
Read MoreTo do well in school and life, kids need to learn how to stick with something, even if it's hard. This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring Common helps adults guide children in persisting to achieve goals even in the face of obstacles.
Read MoreWhen your kid needs a nudge to overcome a challenge, encourage them to pretend to be (or imagine being) someone they admire. This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring common can help.
Read MoreMistakes can be hard! But when family members talk openly about times when they made a mistake and lessons they learned, it can help kids understand that mistakes are a stepping stone for success rather than a source of shame. This resource from Harvard’s Making Caring Common can help adults guide kids in learning from mistakes.
Read MoreSchools and parents have a moral responsibility to make school integration a priority. Integrated schools have important social, emotional, ethical, and academic benefits for all children. Integration is also vital to keeping our country whole, and to a meaningful democracy. Here are some steps you can take to both find a school that is best for your child and to increase the chances that the school you choose will be thoughtfully integrated.
Read MoreIntense achievement pressure, particularly in affluent communities, can generate high levels of stress, anxiety, and/or depression in young people. As parents, we need to be mindful of how we contribute to this pressure. These questions from Harvard’s Making Caring Common can help parents be alert to red flags that they may be putting too much pressure on their child(ren) in the college admissions process.
Read MoreParents and other primary caregivers shape their children’s moral development in myriad ways. They also often influence every phase of the college preparation, search, and admissions process.
Yet the troubling reality is that a great many parents are fundamentally failing to prepare young people to be caring, ethical community members and citizens. That’s true in part because of the degree to which parents have elevated achievement and demoted concern for others as the primary goal of child-raising.
In these guideposts from Harvard’s Making Caring Common, we explore how parents can guide their teen ethically, reduce excessive achievement pressure, and promote key ethical, social, and emotional capacities in teens in the college admissions process.
Read MoreWe’ve developed a set of guideposts to raising caring, respectful, and ethical children, along with tips for putting them into action. These guideposts are supported by many studies and by the work that our various organizations have conducted over several decades with families across America.
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