parenting tiktok

Clear communication and consistency are essential when dealing with children. An excellent way for parents to be consistent in their parenting is to have a hip pocket full of memorable one-liners that remind their kids to treat everyone respectfully, including themselves. These one-liners also help establish and reinforce family rules.

Nicole, a mother of three and founder of the Raising Kind Kids Club, is going viral on TikTok for a post where she shares the memorable one-liners she uses with her children, who are now teenagers. The one-liners are all examples of kind, gentle and respectful parenting. They are also a great way to reinforce rules and values.

“Cause when we say things over and over and over again, it can feel like ‘Oh my gosh, why do I have to keep repeating myself?’ so we have some one-liners that just make things so much easier and more importantly, they work cause our kids know what they mean,” Nicole shared in her video with over 1.9 million views.

Here are 10 of Nicole’s go-to one-liners:

1. When Nicole’s children complain that their friends get to do things they don’t, she says: “Every family has different rules.”

2. To remind her kids that it’s never okay to make fun of someone’s appearance, she says, “We don't comment on other people's bodies."

3. Nicole’s husband has a great line for when her kids mock something someone likes: “Don't yuck someone else's yum.”

4. Nicole doesn’t believe that her children should be forced into friendships, but she does want them to be respectful, so she reminds them that “You don't have to be friends with everyone, but you have to be friendly.”

5. To teach her children about consent, she regularly says: "Stop means stop" and "No means no."

6. When they’re being adventurous and could injure themselves: "Make good choices for your body.”

7. She confronts disingenuous apologies with: "I'm sorry it's just words a real apology is a change in behavior."

8. When the kids are being sarcastic, she asks for clear speech: "Say what you mean and mean what you say."

9. When her children are scared and need to push through the emotion, she helps them gain extra strength by saying, "It's okay to be nervous. You can be brave and scared and do it anyway."

10. If her kids come to her with a problem, she allows them to choose her response: "Do you want help, advice, or just listening?"

The folks in the comments had some additional one-liners that can also be very helpful for raising kind kids. “I learned a ton more great one-liners from our online community,” Nicole told Upworthy. “But my favorite new line is: ‘You don’t have to like them but you can’t recruit other people not to like them.’ This is from @TheLadySarah and it's a great way to remind kids to avoid 'mean girl' behaviors, which can quickly turn into social bullying behaviors.”

Here are a few other memorable one-liners from folks in the comments:

"We keep surprises, not secrets.”

“All feelings are welcomed. All behaviors are not.”

"Dimming someone else's light does not make yours brighter."

As a disability advocate, she shared her one-liner that teaches tolerance: “Everyone’s brains and bodies work differently.”

Nicole told Upworthy she was inspired to start the Raising Kind Kids Club after her daughter was bullied. “The one thing that saved her mental health (and mine) was the kindness of others,” she said. “Kindness can be taught and we can encourage kids to want to be kind more often, eventually making kindness a habit. And that's how we can change the world around us: raise a generation of kind kids who speak and act with more kindness, more often, who stand up to bullying behaviors, who celebrate each others' differences and who show empathy and compassion to those around them.”

You can read more about Nicole and her followers' one-liners at Coffee and Carpool.