Teaching Children Virtues

Parents of school-aged children get busy, and sometimes focus on their children's negative behaviors. It's important to know that as a parent, you have the power to create teachable moments to introduce your children to developing positive character traits that will serve them well all their lives. Parents don't have to take a passive role, feeling frustrated with the values in movies, society and media that impact their children and teens. Instead, you and your partner can be the choreographers in teaching your children to be virtuous.

Grandparents, aunts and uncles can also make valuable contributions by teaching positive character traits, and discussing them with the young people whose lives you touch.

To get started, you will need to make a list of the character virtues that you admire in people. Here are some to consider, but you can develop a list of your own personal favorites:

Humility/Modesty

Gentleness

Self-control

Patience

Kindness 

Compassion

Self-discipline

Productiveness

Tenacity/ Perseverance

Courage

Integrity

Honesty

Self-care

Independence

Creativity

Resourcefulness

Open-mindedness

Love of learning

Justice

Personal leadership

Forgiveness

Gratitude

Playfulness

Teamwork

Spirituality

Cultivating joy/happiness

Appreciation of beauty

Social responsibility/service

Humanity (caring for others)

You might begin by choosing which trait you want to focus on with the young person/people in your life for the next month. I generally encourage parents to begin with the virtue you believe your children are most needing for their development. For example, if your children argue with each other and annoy each other, you may want to begin with focusing on teamwork.

If you hold weekly family meetings, as I encourage all the families I work with in family counseling to do, the meeting is a great time to introduce this month's virtue. You can have one of the children make a poster to hang up in the kitchen about that value, and have each family member add examples that they see at the next family meeting.

Make a plan for how you can teach the value of each trait. You can discuss it, help the child make an art project/collage demonstrating it, do some volunteer work together to experience it, or go on an outing together to explore it. You can look for examples of a particular character trait in the news or within the people you each know and talk about it. Asking children to watch for an example that they see among their friends of a particular virtue is fun and engages them. If you are teaching about service, perhaps you can do some volunteer work as a family as well as have each family member do random acts of kindness for others and compare notes.

Have some fun and be creative. I can remember being a child and learning about choosing a positive attitude by having a hall table with an empty drawer that we pulled a smile from each day when we left the house. Small children love to use their imaginations to learn things.

Grandparents can share stories about family members and others who demonstrated living the virtue you wish to help develop.

Parents, as well as family therapists, too often focus on negative behaviors. Helping actively develop character virtues and strengths is a healthy way to help create a next generation who are wise, transcend self, humane towards others, self-motivated and wonderful to be in relationship with. I can't think of a better legacy to leave behind us.

Can We Be Kinder?

George Saunders is an award winning writer of short stories and children's books, and a creative writing professor for the MFA program at Syracuse University. His tone is often tragicomic and his work often questions consumerism, corporate culture and the role of mass media. Saunders' satirical tone reminds some readers of Kurt Vonnegut, whose work inspired him. Last year, he gave a well-received commencement speech at Syracuse that has just been released as a short, 64-page book called  Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness (Random House, 2014). It's well worth reading.

Saunders asserts that as a goal in life, we could do worse than to try to be kinder. He recounts how on his biggest regrets so far in life are failures of kindness. In particular, he remembers a girl is seventh grade who was new at school. He wasn't one of the kids who teased her, but he regrets that he didn't do more to stop her suffering. She just moved away. He wishes he did more to stand up for her and be kind.

We remember people who are kind to us. Can you picture the people along your life path who have reached out to you with support, encouragement and kindness? Did it make a difference?

What regrets do you have about not being kind at some time in your life, either through hurting someone else or failing to stand up for someone you could help protect?

Kindness may start out easy, but may require you to speak up, take a stand or do something different.
Kindness can be messy or complicated. It may require you to go out of your way.

Saunders contemplates why we aren't kinder to each other in his book. I liked his ideas. He thinks sometimes we see ourselves as central to the universe, as if our story is the main or only story. (It's not, by the way. Turns out that everyone has their own narrative.) Saunders believes some of us mistakenly believe that we are separate from the universe. Others of us think we are permanent, and will death will never impact us. We actually know on an intellectual basis that all three of these possibilities are not true, but we might like to act like they are.

How can we become more kind, present, loving, open and less self-absorbed?

We can observe our own life history and our own periods of high and low kindness.

We can seek out art, literature, spirituality, meditation, prayer, time with children, or a conversation with a dear friend who is honest with us to reconnect with what really matters.

If all goes well with our development as a human being, we should get kinder as we age and suffer more losses. Hopefully we grow less selfish and more loving, but there is an optional element to this. Aging happens to most people, but emotional maturity is optional.

I highly recommend Congratulations, by the way. It reminds me that the world needs more kind people, probably more than it needs more successful ones.