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10
Tips for Raising Children of Character |
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| by
Dr. Kevin Ryan |
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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:
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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 that are influencing our children. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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Learn to listen to your children. It is easy for us 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. |
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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. |
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| 9.
Make a big deal out 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 that children
will draw on throughout their lives. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| Copyright
2002 |
| Center
for the Advancement of Ethics and Character |
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