At the store this week my sister asked me if my 2-year-old knew the lady he was waving to in the checkout line. She thought they were old friends because the lady had a huge smile on her face and was enthusiastically waving back and talking to him.

“No,” I replied. “He doesn’t know her. He waves to everyone.”

The experience got me thinking about my 2-year-old and 4-year-old and how beautifully pure their love is. They don’t have any qualms about strangers until we paint them out to be scary, bad people who could hurt them. They don’t notice that someone’s skin color is different from their own. They don’t care what people wear, what they look like, where they go to church, or where they live. To my young kids, a person is a person—worthy of a smile, a wave, a conversation, and, when needed, a hug.

In contrast, my 7-year-old and 10-year-old are a little more skeptical of people. They pay attention to what someone looks like. They pay attention to what they do—if what they’re doing is something they’ve been taught is good or bad. And more and more, they are paying attention to choices and consequences. Their responses to people are different from my boys because as they’ve grown older, we’ve taught them to be different.

I believe children are born with an innate ability to trust and to love. In the New Testament, it was Jesus Christ who taught us to look to children as an example.

“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” ( Matthew 18:3–4 ).

As I reflected on my desire to raise good kids—kids who are kind, kids who don’t judge, kids who love people despite what they look like, what they believe in, and what they choose—I came to the realization that hate is learned. Love is natural. If I’m going to “not mess up my kids” when it comes to love, I need to learn from their example and then incorporate that into how I lead by example. These are three simple but poignant lessons my kids have taught me about learning to love anybody.