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.

Your Family of Origin: It's Where Your Story Begins

You get more than your eye and hair color from your family. Understanding as much as you can about your family of origin is incredibly helpful as a starting place for working on yourself. Just as we inherit DNA, we also get patterns of behavior and ways of being in relationships scripted for us. If we have insight about what our parents' and grandparents' lives were like, how they related to others, and what their emotional lives were like, we can better understand ourselves.

As a structural family therapist, I often draw out maps of family experience known as genograms. In them, I work with individuals, couples and families to illuminate and bring the family history to life. We go as many generations back as we have information about. Here are some family patterns to consider:

1. Where were your family members raised? Did they immigrate from somewhere else? Why?

2. What do you know about their childhood experiences? Socio-economic status of each part of the family?

3. What educational level did people have? What kind of work did they do?

4. What do you know about how happy the marriages were in both sides of your family? Were family members expressive? Unexpressive? Affectionate? Aloof?

5. Are there family members who struggled with alcohol or substance abuse? Was it treated or untreated? How did family cope with challenges in healthy or unhealthy ways?

6. Who struggled with anxiety or depression? Was it treated or untreated?

7. For deceased family members, at what age did they die, and from what cause? How did losses impact the family? Are there suicides in the family? Are there chronic or life threatening illnesses? Deaths from war?

8. Who stays married no matter what ? Do people divorce and/or remarry? Are there patterns of infidelity?

9. What role does faith play in any of the family?

10. What is each generations' style of parenting? How small or large are the families? How did parents discipline? Do families stay close, or splinter apart?

11. Where are the alliances? Who is close to who? Who fights with who?

12.What are the family traditions and values on each side of the family?

13. Who moves away? Who stays close to home?

14. Who cares for aging relatives? What is home like?

15.What is the family most proud of in terms of accomplishments?

There are many subtle impacts of your family of origin role models. For example, if your parents fought a great deal and were not openly kind or affectionate with each other, that's the script you get by growing up with them. If you understand that, you can choose to love your parents but decide to rewrite how couples interact with each other. You can decide to be caring and loving, and model something completely different to your own children. That's powerful change.

Knowing your family genogram isn't about blame. It's about understanding where and how your story begins and what feels "normal" to you. When you marry, your partner comes with their own family story. Neither one is all good or all bad. It's just where you start. The more honest, open and non-defensive you can be about the patterns in your family, the better. It allows you the emotional freedom to make choices about which parts of the family transmission pattern you want to continue, and where you chose to edit and rewrite your own life story.

It IS a Wonderful Life

At the holiday season, many people have a favorite holiday movie they like to watch, like Miracle on 34th Street,National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation,the Charlie Brown Christmas Movie, or Elf. It is a fun tradition to watch them again every year, and share the experience with a loved one or two. My favorite is the 1946 Frank Capra classic,It's a Wonderful Life. There are so many valuable lessons in that movie about what is really important in our lives. The movie is based on a short story, The Greatest Gift, by Phillip Van Doren Stern.

In the movie,It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart plays a compassionate, but despairing businessman who gets helped by an angel to see what life would have been like if he had never existed. Stewart gets to see the impact on his wife, Donna Reed, his brother, and the community he lives in, if he had not been present. In the end, Stewarts' whole town comes together to help Stewart and his family solve their financial crisis on Christmas Eve.There are tears all around (including my family room) as the touching scene evolves. You can see on Stewart's face the love and deep tenderness and appreciation he feels for his family and friends.

What an appropriate reframe for each of us this holiday season. How essential it seems to not hyperfocus on gifts, lists, or the house being perfect. Every holiday season, no matter the economy, or health challenges, or even loss, there is still much to be appreciative of. What a wonderful time to write or express to those you love how much they mean to you, or what your life would be missing without them in it. It might be the most valuable gift you can give.

Too often, as life gets hectic, we focus on the negative, or what we don't have that we want.In the end, its not about stuff.It's the people in our lives, and our warm memories of our experiences with them, that matter.Being really present with your family or friends this season is the key; slowing down to share some relaxed time together and soak in the feelings of warmth and connection. It occured to me after visiting my elderly grandmother one night this week how much each of us can do to listen to others' stories and reach out to those who don't have the health or ability to connect deeply very often,or get a warm smile or a hug. Perhaps you can think of someone who could use your reaching out to them at this holiday season.Pretty much everyone can be touched by a strangers' sincere smile amid the holiday hustle.

In closing, I borrow from Desiderata, which teaches us "...In the noisy confusion of life, keep your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Strive to be happy".It is, truly, a wonderful life as long as we are here to experience and share it with others. Don't let your love and caring go unexpressed, or miss out on the important things by obsessing on the stupid stuff.I am wishing a Happy New Year to my valued readers!