How to Raise a Moral Child

There is absolutely no doubt that children are impressionable upon their parents or other forms of parents and role models. All too often a child's behavior is reflective upon their parents, usually focusing on one of the two; the one they identify with most. These behaviors can be good or bad and a child's social life can be determined by how their parents are. It's simple science and psychology really. When a baby (animal or human) is born, it has a natural instinct to find out how to survive from its parents or other figures they see as role models, and this is a root problem of peer pressure as well; they identify with the group, so they yearn to be like them.

One of these fundamental behaviors is cooperation and team work as it is natural in the wild; a necessity for survival many times. And from this interaction comes a symptom of generosity and morality. Having an understanding that doing good things, is a good thing. But how does a child know what is a good deed to be repeated and what is a lapse of good judgement that should be avoided?



The answer lies with the parental figures. Just like how a dog is trained with treats and praise, a similar principle applies to children. Now I'm not say that children should be taken to PetsMart for hours of obedience training, but the equal amount of effort should be taken upon the parents in studying their behavior to watch for signs of trouble or praise good deeds. For this action, the method is just as important as the reasoning behind it, if not more. The article Raising a Moral Child by Adam Grant featured in the NY Times showcases just how these behaviors should be reward. Grant states that it is more important to use nouns instead of verbs when praising a child. Instead of "Don't cheat" saying, "Don't be a cheater" is more effective. Around age 8, children start to develop a sense of identity so this is where shame and guilt come in to play. Children don't want to be something they know is bad, like a cheater, so by associating a negative action with its negative identifier, cheater, a child is less likely to be a cheater. Another method is to praise a behavior instead of an action. If only an action is praised, than the child will only do it when the reward is available as to benefit them. By praising a behavior, the child will know that just by the way they act, they are being helpful and the feeling of gratitude is reward enough.

Moral of the story here is that when a parent actually takes the time to properly praise and motivate a child, he learns that being a good person can be natural. By copying their parents and having it reinforced with praise, it gets ingrained in their mind that they should be this type of person. By playing off of a natural feeling of shame vs gratitude, raising a moral child might be easier than once thought.

Here is the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/opinion/sunday/raising-a-moral-child.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0