Does your child know how to tell right from wrong? Let us start by giving them this worksheet to solve. Check out these situations and ask your child what is the right way to approach the challenge at hand.
Your child may have answered most of these questions as per your expectations. This goes to show that they are already aware of what is right and what is wrong. However, you might be wondering how to encourage your child to practice these moral behaviours in their lives. Even we as adults face moral dilemmas when we find ourselves in difficult situations. How then can you teach a young child how to differentiate between right and wrong? Building a strong foundation of moral values means ensuring that a child is able to independently judge their course of action. When this learning starts from an early age, the child will be more likely to make conscious choices toward the path of righteousness.
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Moral Values Your Child Must Learn
Honesty
Always tell the truth, no matter what. Learning this at a young age ensures trust, confidence and healthy communication even after the child grows up. There could be tough situations when a child feels tempted to lie due to the fear of getting into trouble. Create an environment where your child feels safe to be honest with you at all times and avoid harsh reactions at that very moment.
Compassion
Teaching children to be compassionate and considerate towards others will make them caring individuals. When they learn to empathise with others, they may feel inspired to help someone in need. You can arrange for them to engage in some volunteer work, take them on a visit to an animal shelter, make some donations with generosity, or bring festive gifts to organisations that care for children in need.
Hardwork
When we reflect on our childhood, they seem like golden days when we lived without worry. However, if you look at life from a child’s point of view, you will see that they have quite a bit of hard work laid out in front of them. A strong foundation of working hard to achieve their goals and dreams is crucial. It is a habit that will stay with them for a long time. There are no shortcuts to success, whether for adults or children.
Sharing
This is one of the most important skills, especially for families with siblings and multiple children. Instilling the value of generosity, caring and sharing go a long way. But does this mean that your child has to give up a toy every time another child demands to play with the same? It is fair for your child to feel attached to a particular belonging, but being able to manage a situation by sharing or taking turns goes a long way in enjoying playing together.
Responsibility
Let your child know that you trust them with responsibility and watch them swell with pride. Responsibility could mean a lot of things. It could mean being careful and taking care of their belongings, making sure their toys don’t get lost, ensuring that they maintain cleanliness in their room, and most importantly, taking the onus of their mistakes and understanding how not to repeat them.
Helping
Be it a classmate trying to figure out a lesson, or an older grandparent at home who needs help picking up something from the floor, if your child understands how much their help means to someone, they will be encouraged to lend a hand wherever they can.
Respect
Respect is not something that is limited to a child-adult relationship. Children must learn to respect their elders and teachers, siblings and friends, belongings and even the world they live in.
Politeness
Politeness, love and kindness are values that hold the world together. They bring us together and make us better people. Being harsh or rude to someone is hurtful, and every child must learn never to hurt someone with their actions or even words
Moral Stories To Instill Good Values In Children
Stories have a great impact on people, especially kids who are at an impressionable age. When children read books about their favourite characters and how their good deeds lead to a happy ending for them, they are inspired by those values. Introduce your child to books like Intelliskills Moral Story Books Set that’ll teach them good values like helping, telling the truth, cleanliness and taking responsibility.
Worksheets To Teach Your Child Right From Wrong
Once you have explained to your child what are the various morals and values they must learn, see if they have understood them well by presenting them with situations. Print out some worksheets, like the one at the start of this article, or conduct a verbal version of these quizzes during family time or as a fun road trip game or travel time activity.
Modelling Moral Behaviour At Home
Parents constantly watch their own conduct as they know their child is observing them and might imitate their actions later. Modelling moral behaviour becomes important for the child to learn that no matter who you are or whom you are dealing with, one must always adhere to their values and never wrong anyone. A few ways in which you can do this are:
- Make sure you speak politely, even with your child. When they are treated with respect, they will treat others will respect too.
- If you feel you have been irrational with your child, don’t hesitate to say sorry to them. You will love the “It’s okay” hug you get in return.
- Be generous with the magic words “Please” and “Thank you”, especially when you’re around your child.
- Maintain realistic standards for your child and uphold those values yourself too. You can’t expect your child to learn honestly when they watch you make up lies or small excuses while dealing with others.
- Discuss how you spent your day working hard at work, or share stories of your childhood days when you studied hard for your tests or took some extra effort to score better on a school assignment.
Do Rewards Help In Teaching Kids Moral Values?
Kids are often encouraged to demonstrate certain behaviours when they know there is a reward up for grabs. Having a reward system in place for a job well done might make them stop and think and consciously work towards winning their points. But when it comes to learning morals, we must question whether this is the reason why a child must act morally. Kids need to be educated that they should imbibe good values not to win points, not to impress others, not to compare themselves with others, but to grow up to be good people and great personalities.
However, if you feel that a rewards system works best for your child, consider the possibility of the reward being a gesture or a valuable expression rather than a material reward. For instance, if you notice your child sharing their treats with their sibling, give them a note at the end of the day that says, “We are proud of you for sharing and caring.” Or, if your child reluctantly leaves their game to come and sit for dinner when you call them, hand them a small card that says, “Thank you for obeying your parents.” These kinds of expressions will serve as a reward, which your child can collect in a note jar, motivating them to collect more. Another positive outcome of these is that your child will see how their actions made you feel and thus understand the importance of the good values they exhibited.
What If A Child Does Something Immoral?
Children need our love the most, when we think they deserve it the least. Whether it is something small like wasting food on their plate, to something bigger like pulling out some money from your wallet when you aren’t looking, it hurts us as parents to see our child do anything immoral. Our instinct may be to express anger, give them a scolding, a punishment or time out to establish how unhappy we are about their behaviour. As a parent, teacher or caregiver, here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure your child understands and comprehends the situation well.
1. Hold Your Reaction
Do not be too quick to shout at your child. In the heat of the moment, they might perceive it as, “My parents are so mean!” and block you out, instead of understanding that they did something to deserve a scolding.
2. Guide Them To Realise Their Mistake
Ask them to narrate what happened and what caused them to do what they did. Ask them if they can think of another way to deal with the situation. Let them conclude which approach is morally correct.
3. Make Them Empathise
If another person is involved in the equation, ask your child if they can guess how their action made the other person feel. This will help them realise the impact their actions have on others.
4. Don’t Force Them To Apologise
A parent’s instinct would be to scold the child and force them to apologise. However, this apology won’t mean much to the child. Give them time to think over their actions and then support them with all your love when they are ready to apologise.
5. Avoid Unrealistic Threats
By now, your kids know that you are not going to “throw away all their toys” or “let the boogie man take them away”. If you declare a punishment for your child, make sure it is something that you can follow through with and is sensible. The objective of the punishment shouldn’t simply be establishing your authority, but must have a learning opportunity for the child.
6. Never Withdraw Your Love
You must remember that it would be a moment of immense insecurity, vulnerability or weakness that forced your child to do something immoral. Empower them with your love and observe how it makes them feel stronger. Don’t scare them by raising your voice or your hands at them.
7. Choose Your Battles
You don’t want to be known as the parent who constantly scolds for everything. While you may notice several things that your child could have done better throughout the day, try to let some of the small things go by. Give your child the benefit of the doubt that they must not have done this deliberately.
8. Appreciate How They Handle The Situation
It may be easy to do something wrong and get away with it. But when your child takes the difficult step of owning their mistake or trying to improve it, let them know that you appreciate the moral strength that they have shown.
A strong foundation of moral values will help your child grow into a wonderful person. And teaching kids these good values becomes much easier with the strength of love. Whether it is through reading books, observing parents, or by learning from their mistakes, every child takes their own time in processing the world around them. Guide them along the way and let them know that you will be proud of them always.
