When Kindness is Not a Pushover Move
Setting boundaries around kindness
Some may remember the 2004 Bollywood movie Lakshya starring Hrithik Roshan & Preity Zinta. Romila, a young war correspondent, calls Karan, who is now a soldier of the Indian Army, on the frontlines.
Years earlier, she had ended things with him, frustrated by his lack of purpose, unimpressed by his drifting ambition. But now, after seeing Karan on television, steady in uniform and calm in courage, she wants to talk. Maybe even start again.
Karan listens. Then says something that doesn’t come from anger, but from growth:
“You don’t get to decide when we speak and when we stop. Not anymore.”
It is not a grand cinematic confrontation- just a quiet assertion of dignity. Karan walks away, not out of spite, but out of self-respect. The kindness in him remains- he has not erased her or hated her- but he has changed the terms.
Eventually, they do find their way back, but only after that line is drawn.
“Not yet”
We often teach our children to be kind. But we don’t always teach them that kindness can also say, “Not yet.” However, real kindness, the kind that holds up under hurt, doesn’t just stay quiet or stay close. It stays human.
In the face of hurt, staying kind means learning a difficult balance: how to protect your dignity without shutting the door. How to offer the chance to reconnect, but not unconditionally.
This kind of calibrated kindness isn’t just an emotional instinct. It turns out, it’s also a winning strategy. One that scientists, coders, and philosophers stumbled upon through a surprising source: a simple game.
The kindness code
Robert Axelrod, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, wasn’t looking to solve childhood fairness dilemmas. He was trying to understand international conflict. However, the model he created, through a “coding tournament” in the early 1980s, revealed something far more timeless about how trust & kindness work.
Axelrod invited scholars to design computer programs that would repeatedly play a game called the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The aim? Maximise one’s own outcome, without being able to communicate or coordinate with others. Each strategy would face every other strategy in a round-robin format, hundreds of times.
Some coding strategies tried to dominate early. Others kept giving, hoping the other side would eventually cooperate. But the one that quietly outperformed them all was the simplest:
Start kind.
Return the same.
And if the other side changes, adjust.
This strategy was called tit-for-tat. It didn’t forgive blindly, but it also didn’t punish forever. It remembered the last move and responded with equal weight. If the other player cooperated, it did too. If they defected, it pushed back, just once. And then, it watched again.
What made it powerful wasn’t its toughness. It was its emotional intelligence:
Nice, but willing to respond to provocation.
Firm, but forgiving.
Cooperative, but not naive.
It was, quite simply, kind but not blind.
The kindest code
But what made Axelrod’s work even more powerful was this: he ran the tournament twice. The second time, everyone knew tit-for-tat had won before. They came ready to beat it. Some tried to punish early. Others exploited the niceness. But tit-for-tat won again.
The strategy worked not because it was soft, but because it was nice, provokable, and forgiving.
It never struck first, and it struck back when necessary. And it always left the door open for return. This was benevolent tit-for-tat- a kindness that wasn’t a pushover.
And it wasn’t just a clever algorithm.
Kindness as pause & repair
Across history and culture, this idea of benevolent tit-for-tat wasn’t confined to algorithms. It lived in emotional practices and shaped how communities handled betrayal, repair, and return.
Martin Seligman, in his work on prosocial behaviour, describes how children develop social intelligence through “moral memory.” They track who was fair to them and adjust their trust accordingly. These weren’t random acts of kindness, but thoughtful recalibrations.
Forgiveness, yes- but only when fairness returned.
And long before modern psychology, Indian cultural traditions had already built a ritual around this: prāyāścitta- atonement that preceded forgiveness. In dharmic philosophy, kshama was never the starting point.
It came after the wrongdoer made a visible effort to change. A symbolic fast, a vow of renunciation, a public apology, whatever be the form, but the arc remained the same:
· Step back.
· Let the other make the move.
· Then return, if they did.
Across cultures, the wisdom held steady: kindness does not erase accountability. It holds space for change. We will devote a couple of posts on kindness as repair tool in the next few weeks.
Help kids to pause- not please
There’s a trap many kind kids fall into, and they fall hard. It’s the belief that kindness means keeping the peace, no matter the cost. That if someone hurts you, it’s kinder to brush it off, move on, or try harder to please.
They confuse being kind with being nice. And then they wonder why they feel quietly small inside. But here’s the deeper truth: real kindness includes the courage to step back.
Children grasp fairness very early. If you’ve ever watched two five-year-olds play, you’ve likely heard, “That’s not fair!” shouted with great moral clarity. What they don’t yet know is what to do after something unfair happens.
Should they stay? Should they walk away? Should they say something? Is it unkind to say no?
This is where parents step in, not just as protectors, but as translators of emotional strategy. Because while many of us were raised to be good, we weren’t always taught how to be wisely good. We weren’t taught that kindness can pause; that it can say, “That wasn’t okay,” without slamming the door shut forever.
One way to help our kids is to offer a simple framework- an emotional loop they can grow into:
Start kind.
If the other person hurts you, step back.
If they come back with kindness, meet them there.
That’s benevolent tit-for-tat in a child’s language. It’s something you can model in small, everyday moments.
I want to be kind…but I’m hurt
When a sibling lashes out, when a friend excludes them, when they’re the one who made a mistake. You can slow the moment down, not to punish, but to notice:
“You don’t have to get it perfect, but you do have to try again with kindness.”
Even the language we use can help them build this loop. Instead of “Say sorry,” you might say, “Let’s take a pause and try again when we’re ready.”
Instead of “Be nice,” you might say, “Kindness also means taking care of yourself.”
Because the goal isn’t to raise kids who keep giving no matter what. It’s to raise kids who know when to give, when to wait, and when to try again, not out of guilt, but out of growth.
That’s what makes kindness a life skill.
Not soft. Not easy. But strong, strategic, and deeply human.
Raising kind isn’t always easy. But it’s always worth it. See you soon with the next issue of Raising Ki(n)d.
Gaurav G