sentence pattern clarification [closed]

I am really confused with indirect and direct objects ...

I need to understand the sentence pattern for this sentence:

He showed kindness to his parents.

The pattern is N-AV-n-N (subject, action verb, indirect object, direct object). The "to his parents" is the indirect object. The "to" is always implied to come before an indirect object, and can sometimes be omitted. The sentence can be re-worded to omit it:

He showed his parents kindness.

Your original sentence has no indirect object.

• He showed kindness to his parents.

Here kindness is the direct object, and his parents is the object of the preposition to — it is not an indirect object there.

In this sentence:

• He showed his parents kindness.

Now his parents is indeed an indirect object.

Similarly, this has an indirect object:

• He showed me it.

But this does not:

• He showed it to me.