Ethics For Kids

Imparting Ethics on Your Children

By
Relationship Advice Expert April Masini

Q: Dear April Masini,

I'm a mom with young children, becoming increasingly disconcerted with the way the world is -- it seems like the media presents everyone behaving badly with no consequences.

While I always expected I'd let my kids learn about making good decisions and ethics as they grow up and make mistakes, I'm starting to think I need to be stronger about it in my own home to combat what they're seeing outside the home. I don't want to bore or confuse them, but I want to infuse them with practical thoughts about how they can deal with all the challenging situations they'll come up against.

How can I do this?

Sincerely,

Level-Headed Mom 

A:

Dear Level-Headed Mom,

There are non-boring, non-professorial ways to teach your kids about ethics, and they primarily involve setting a good example for them and using real world situations. An academic discussion won't work with a little kid, but guiding them through real decisions that people come up against will!

When children see their parents and the people that they look up to (teachers, older siblings) behaving in certain respectful ways, they emulate this because they want to be like their role models. Later when children become tweens and teens they model peers and celebrities, and if a parent hasn't done his or her job by then, it will be very hard to do so. 

Manners are important to practice and enforce -- and not just using the right fork or waiting for the hostess or the mother to sit down before everyone begins to eat. Returning people's phone calls and doing what you promise to do when you promise to do it, are also signs of respect -- for others and for yourself. Taking care of your body and your time as well as your relationship with your partner are also signs of respect that a child must learn in order to function as a respectful and respecting human being. 

When you see your child acting disrespectfully, explain what behavior you expect from your children. In fact, you should have done this already, but if you haven't, it's not too late. Then, when the children know what is expected of them, you get to practice consistent and appropriate disciplining in order to enforce and teach respectful behavior. 

Teaching kids respect is also a great opportunity for parents to get on the same page with each other because no matter how long they've been married, chances are that because they were each raised by different parents they have different ideas about respect and raising children. This may be a great time to incorporate new manners and ideas into your own, nuclear family.

5 Ways To Teach Your Child Ethics

1. Talk about current events with your child in which ethics play a part. The event can be a national scandal or a local incident -- choose one depending on your child's maturity level and age. Open a discussion and ask what your child thinks about right and wrong. Then, offer your opinion on right and wrong. Word this carefully. Your child is listening. 

2. Talk about your own ethical struggles. Explain why you don't like to pay taxes, but you do pay them. Explain why you don't break the law. 

3. Expand your discussions. Explain the difference between behavior and consequences for that behavior on a small scale (at school) to a larger scale (Federal law). 

4. Explain inequity to your child. Not everyone has the same amount of stuff or money as everyone else. It is our choice to be generous with what we have or to be stingy with what we have. Explain the feelings that you and your child have after being generous and after being stingy (it's human to be both). 

5. Don't pass judgment. Keep some distance between your feelings and the law or the rules. Don't call someone a bad person because they broke the law. Call them a troubled person. The trouble can be temporary or permanent. It's important that you child learns that doing something unethical is not a permanent problem. People can repent and readjust their lives. 

Children learn ethics, or respect, in two ways:

1. They see it modeled for them or they see the opposite modeled for them, and they learn disrespect. 

2. They are guided by rules and consequences for behavior, or they are not guided and behaviorally modified, and they learn disrespect or lack of respect.

April Masini -- nicknamed "the new millennium's Dear Abby" by the media, is author of the best-selling books Date Out Of Your League and Think & Date Like A Man, the two (just released) step-by-step dating and relationship manuals, Ideas for a Fun Date and Romantic Date Ideas, and the critically acclaimed dating and relationship online magazine www.AskApril.com.

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