Every parent wants their kid to grow up with a good character and sense of right and wrong. But teaching kids to grow up with family values does happen on their own unless you give grounding to them. We all know that instilling family values to our kids is more than important as a parent. “But how?” is the most common question we get to hear from the worried parents.
Teaching values to the kid are not just talking about the family members and their beliefs but relate to more on the moral values that your family accepts as the truth or believes in. It could be traditional values which tell you right or wrong and forms a base for their opinions.
Know and understand as a parent, what value means to your family
Generally speaking, honesty, forgiveness, well-mannered, hardworking, responsibility, patience, empathy, helping, generosity, respect are the most common family values we speak about. How these play an important role in a family varies. For example, responsibility for a family might be to take care of themselves financially and referring to money habits. However, for another family, it could be a responsibility towards the society’s health and nature, keeping the neighborhood clean and healthy. And it could mean both for some other family.
Now that we have explained how each family values can differ before we rush to know how to teach children family values, let us understand various aspects of it. The primary thing is to know what these values mean to your family. Does generosity mean you should become a philanthropist or just be kind to the people? Does honesty mean being up-front by being true to your thoughts or never telling a lie? Once you have an idea of how these values hold good to your family, you should start teaching family values to your children as well.
Understand what you try to convey to your children via values
We understand that family values are passed along generations via wealth, parent’s attitude and their relationships. But how do you know which value are you passing to your kid? For example, if you convey to your kids that “We are rich and hence we should lend money to the needy”. Clearly, the kids learn that they are superior to the others! Whereas, if you say that “We should help and give whatever we can to the needy and to the society”, brings in all the difference as the kid knows that we should be generous and helping!
Kids want to be like grown-ups, wearing their father’s spectacles and talking like their mother! They learn from the day to day activities and behavior. The body language, attitude, and aura that a parent personifies every moment is observed by the kid and imbibed.
When to teach your children morals?
Honestly, there isn’t an age to start teaching family values. Like we said earlier –there aren’t particular instructions to follow or set of commands to teach your kid at a particular age. It comes to them every single day and every single minute of their lives. Thus it is said that parent’s love and dedication to the kids matter the most in their growing ages. Ask your kid what are other values that they would want to add as they learn from their friends and might appreciate it too. Praising your kid when they do it right is the key to encourage and keep the good deed going.
How does kid learn morals from you?
You may be wrong in thinking that you can do wrong since your family isn’t watching you! You have to be the role model for your kid to learn from you. This is called leading by example. You cannot ask your kid helpful when they see you shrug off an elderly person struggling to cross the road. You cannot teach patience to the kids when you snap at them when they take time to get ready. Hence, take a look at your own behavior and alter it and might just want to explain it to the kid saying “That lady pushed me off while walking on the road! Normally I would get mad, but I am choosing to keep calm as it crowded she would have been in a hurry.” This teaches the kid to think before reacting and show empathy.
In what ways can you teach family values to your children?
You can always perform few activities to get started and put them to do good by encouraging and building your family values gradually.
- Greet everyone with a smile.
- Teach the value for your hard-earned money. Tell them how you earn dollars and what is the expenditure like.
- Hold the door for the people following behind you as a courtesy.
- Let kids take some responsibility of their own. For example, let them do their homework but be available for them as a guide whenever they need.
- Show love and care to pets.
- Explain kids to do their daily chores.
- Spend a weekend gathering all unwanted clothes and books and go off to donate them and put it to a good use.
- Ask the kid to write a diary or draw their thoughts for the day.
- Read books and encourage kids to read too. Be it devotional, motivational or educational. Any reading imparts knowledge to the kids.
- Encourage kids to clean up the trash in the locality regularly.
- Make a gratitude note for the kid and ask them to write a thank-you note to someone they are grateful to.
- Encourage helping elders and spend some extra time with them talking about family values.
- Encourage kids to share their toys with friends.
Although this might look like a very little thing to ask the kids to do, this is the beginning. You will see your kid growing grateful and responsible with time. Have you ever thought what do your kids think about racism? We have an article for you to read about that as well here. Lastly, again like we keep saying, kids take their own time but they learn; and every child is different. As a parent know your child and change your style of teaching them.
Tell us what you think about this and how do you plan on teaching your kids?
