Character Education
Informational
Handbook & Guide
Ten Tips
for Raising Children
of Character
It is one of those essential facts
of life that raising good children—children of character-demands
time and attention. While having children may be “doing what
comes naturally,” being a good parent is much more complicated.
Here are ten tips to help your children build sturdy
characters:
1. Put parenting first. This is
hard to do in a world with so many competing demands. Good parents
consciously plan and devote time to parenting. They make developing
their children’s character their top priority.
2. Review how you spend the hours
and days of your week. Think about the amount of time your children
spend with you. Plan how you can weave your children into your social
life and knit yourself into their lives.
3. Be a good example. Face it:
human beings learn primarily through modeling. In fact, you
can’t avoid being an example to your children, whether good or
bad. Being a good example, then, is probably your most important
job.
4. Develop an ear and an eye for
what your children are absorbing. Children are like sponges. Much of
what they take in has to do with moral values and character. Books,
songs, TV, the Internet, and films are continually delivering
messages—moral and immoral—to our children. As parents we
must control the flow of ideas and images which are influencing our
children.
5. Use the language of character.
Children cannot develop a moral compass unless people around them use
the clear, sharp language of right and wrong.
6. Punish with a loving heart.
Today, punishment has a bad reputation. The results are guilt-ridden
parents and self-indulgent, out-of-control children. Children need
limits. They will ignore these limits on occasion. Reasonable
punishment is one of the ways human beings have always learned.
Children must understand what punishment is for and know that its
source is parental love.
7. Learn to listen to your
children. It is easy to tune out the talk of our children. One of the
greatest things we can do for them is to take them seriously and set
aside time to listen.
8. Get deeply involved in your
child’s school life. School is the main event in the lives of
our children. Their experience there is a mixed bag of triumphs and
disappointments. How they deal with them will influence the course of
their lives. Helping our children become good students is another
name for helping them acquire strong character.
9. Make a big deal of the family
meal. One of the most dangerous trends in America is the dying of the
family meal. The dinner table is not only a place of sustenance and
family business but also a place for the teaching and passing on of
our values. Manners and rules are subtly absorbed over the table.
Family mealtime should communicate and sustain ideals which children
will draw on throughout their lives.
10. Do not reduce character
education to words alone. We gain virtue through practice. Parents
should help children by promoting moral action through
self-discipline, good work habits, kind and considerate behavior to
others, and community service. The bottom line in character
development is behavior—their behavior.
As parents, we want our children to
be the architects of their own character crafting, while we accept
the responsibility to be architects of the environment—physical
and moral. We need to create an environment in which our children can
develop habits of honesty, generosity, and a sense of justice. For
most of us, the greatest opportunity we personally have to deepen our
own character is through the daily blood, sweat and tears of
struggling to be good parents.
Kevin Ryan, Director of Boston
University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character.
Adapted with permission of the Massachusetts Family
Institute.
"Few
things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him
an to let him know that you trust him."
- Booker T. Washington
|
