Children & Success
Helping Your Children to Grow Up Happy, Confident and Successful
There are many ways to explain values to children and to help them understand them and learning early in life about the principles of success. These methods don't require that you do all the talking, just that you guide the learning process so your children can picture your priority values for themselves. Part of the picture is knowing which behaviors demonstrate the value and which demonstrate the opposite.
One of your jobs as a parent is to explain your values in behavioral terms. Help your children recognize the emotional results of behaving in accordance with each value. In other words, it feels good to do the right thing. It is true that wise decisions make us feel good inside. And our actions affect the feelings of friends and parents. Help your children learn to recognize that making wise decisions helps them feel good about themselves.
Your goal is to help your children develop a positive emotional response to adopting each of your values. When your child comes home from school and proudly tells you how well he or she did on a spelling or history test, express your positive response, then affirm your child's positive response. Say, "When you work hard and do well, you feel proud, don't you?" Then ask, "What else do you feel?" Encourage children to identify as many positive feelings that come from acting on one of the values you have been teaching. Encourage them to bask in those positive feelings. During supper, invite them to share what they did and how good it made them feel. Express your positive thoughts so the entire family can understand how you respond to positive behaviors and choices.
Let your children know how pleased, happy, excited, thrilled, joyous, satisfied, and proud you are when they demonstrate your values. And you also may let them know how disappointed, displeased, unhappy, depressed, sad, upset, angry, and embarrassed you are when they act on values that are opposite from yours. The focus of the emotional response must be the behavior, not the child. Don't say, "I am unhappy when you are a bad boy."
Instead say, "Even though I love you, when you are unkind, I feel very disappointed." This way it becomes more clear to your child that you are rejecting the behavior, not the child. It is important to explain why you feel disappointed, angry, or sad. If your explanation makes sense to your child, it will have greater impact on the future. Give the positive feedback both individually to your child and in front of the rest of the family, but only give negative feedback individually. A good rule is: 'Praise in public; correct in private.'
Another aspect is helping your children know that other people will respond emotionally to what they do and how they behave. The primary responder will be the person who is directly affected by the behavior: the friend who is treated unkindly, the schoolmate with whom your child is unselfish, the friend who discovers your child to be loyal, and the child at school who is positively impacted by your child's self-control.
Setting Up Your Children For Success In Life Through Values
Children are exposed to many different values. They receive conflicting and confusing messages about values because many adults in their lives do not share the same value system. Parents who want to see their children grow up happy and successful will want to help their children sort out the right messages from the wrong ones.
Here are 8 steps to take as you share your value system with your children.
1. Identify your own values. Before you can teach your children, you need to be clear about what you want them to learn. Don't take a casual approach to this important parental responsibility. Take the time to develop a complete list of those qualities you plan to teach your children.
2. Tell your children what your values are. Learn to state clearly and concisely what you believe and how these values influence decisions in your life. When telling your children about your values, paint word pictures, use analogies, and tell stories. Have your children tell you what you said to ensure that you have communicated clearly.
3. Explain the values. Telling children to be kind, loving, polite, generous, or patient does not give them sufficient information about what you expect. Instead, describe to your children the behaviors that demonstrate those qualities. Let your children know that when they behave in these ways, you are pleased with their choices.
4. Explore the values. Help your children understand values by using a variety of teaching methods, inviting discussions about values, and allowing healthy debates. The more children understand individual values and how these are demonstrated in our lives, the more likely they are to adopt these values.
5. Model what you want your children to say and do. Your choices and commitment to values determines and shapes the kind of person you are becoming. You will want your children to observe you as a living model of the values you teach.
7. Apply values in everyday experiences. The key to passing on values is to help children see how those values apply to daily life. Explain that choices reveal values. For example, a person who does a kind deed for a stranger demonstrates that kindness is one of his or her values. Look for and use teachable moments that provide an opportunity to choose between right and wrong, between good and bad. The situations may be real, on television, in a story you are reading, or something that happened in the past.
8. Reinforce values through games. Your children learn a lot about life as they play. Learning about values is not a boring, academic activity. Be creative and you will find many ways to make learning a game.
