How to raise your child to be a good person
If you want your child to become musical, let him or her learn an instrument. If you want to promote your child's sporting achievements, send them to a sports club. And if you want to have an intelligent child, you support their love of reading and curiosity.
But how do you teach ethics to a child? Moral ideas and good action? The topic is not off the table with a scolding alone. However, it is not rocket science to teach the offspring how a good person should act.
Professor Emeritus Arthur Dobrin and former member of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island published a list of 10 tips for raising your child to be a morally good person in Psychology Today magazine:
1. Act the way you want your child to act
"Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time want it to become a general law." This is Immanuel Kant's famous categorical imperative. This instruction is more relevant today than ever – and a good start to serve as a good role model for your own little one.
Children copy the behavior of their parents. It influences them even more than verbal advice and instructions from mom and dad. So the first step to make a morally good person out of your child is pretty simple: Just act morally well yourself.
2. Consistently set standards for what is right and what is wrong
What is right, what is wrong? A child must first learn to think in these categories and to classify things correctly. And who better to teach the little ones than the parents themselves?
The most important thing is consistency. Anyone who tells their children to only go through green lights, but always scurries over red with the child in stressful everyday life, confuses the child. It is better to first get the offspring used to the norm before confronting them with exceptions.
3. Empower your child when he does good
If the child acts well on its own – for example, comforts the injured sister or hugs the grieving grandmother – the parents say: praise, praise, praise! People – especially children – learn more from praise than from punishment.
If the child links his good behavior with the praise of the parents, he internalizes these good deeds. In this way, they become normality in his everyday life.
4. Explain to the child the reasons for (moral) rules
Thou shalt not hit, not lie, not steal: The list of what children should refrain from is long. However, this authoritarian announcement alone is not enough to put children on the right path.
Children want to understand things. You want to know the reasons why something is forbidden. A child is much more likely to follow a "You can't hit because it hurts the other child" than just the request not to hit.
5. Focus your child's attention on the feelings of others
Empathy is the key to morally good actions. If a child learns to interpret the feelings of his fellow human beings and to build up compassion, he will be less inclined to do evil to other people.
To learn empathy, it is enough for mom and dad to focus their child's attention on other people's feelings. Sentences like "Look, this boy hurt himself and is crying" train empathy.
6. Talk to your child about the importance of kindness
What is the point of being friendly? If you're kind to someone, it's likely that they'll mirror your behavior and be nice as well. If you are kind, you sow peace instead of war.
There are many reasons for friendliness. Explaining them to your children is the first step in making them friendly people.
7. Show your disapproval of unacceptable behavior
It is also part of morally correct behavior to know what is wrong. If you observe immoral behavior or even a violation of the law with your child, you should not sweep this under the carpet as a parent.
Addressing is always better than concealing. This is the only way the child learns what is reprehensible and why.
8. Increase your child's awareness of good decisions
Parents are usually aware that communication plays a major role in parenting. The best thing to do is to help children make a decision and give them useful hints.
For example, if the child can decide for himself whether to give one of his two chocolate chips to his little brother, you can steer him in the right direction: "Look, you have two pieces. Would you like to share it with your brother? Otherwise he'll be sad if he doesn't get one."
9. Emphasize fairness in games
Justice is a supporting pillar of moral action. How do you teach your child this feeling? Quite simply: while playing!
If you take a close look at Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, Uno and Co., you can give your child a lot for life. What is fair? What does injustice feel like? Why is fairness important at all? When playing, children learn faster - and of course it's easy!
10. Show enthusiasm for moral role models and achievements
Just as important as the disapproval of immoral behavior (see point 7) is the appreciation of desirable behavior.
If you observe exemplary behavior with the child - be it in real life or in Disney films - you can certainly explain it to the child. Even toddlers often understand more than we give them credit for.