Teaching Good Values to Children

Children may not be able to immediately appreciate good values and principles taught to them. But they register it in their minds and as they grow up the result of the teaching would be visible. It’s easier to instill good values when they are young and unaware of the fraudulence in the society.

It becomes responsibility of the parents and teachers to help them to distinguish good and bad and prepare them to face the challenges in the big wide world. Since children observe and learn a lot from their surroundings, it is the responsibility of the school and parents to ensure they all live up to the values they are trying to imbibe in the children. Following are few basic moral values that must be instilled in every child:

Honesty

When kids are young, they are very innocent and always speak the truth. They don’t know to hide the truth. But as they grow, with the influence from the surrounding like peers, adults, fears etc they tend to lie. At this point it becomes imperative for the parents to make the child understand that speaking the truth and being honest and facing the repercussions is always better than saying a lie and going saying more lies to cover it up. It’s good to read out books to them about bad results of lying etc.

Respect

Giving respect to one another cannot be taught but it will be automatically learnt by the child from the surroundings. If the parents respect each other, other members of the family and also the child, then the child will automatically start respecting everybody. It’s important to develop this trait as in future the same child could be managing people.

Manners and Discipline

Good manners and discipline are very important to be successful in life. So it’s a good idea to inculcate them in children right from the tender age. They should be taught politely with everyone and apologize with sorry whenever they do anything wrong and use magic words like ‘thank you’ ,’please’, ‘excuse me’ etc ..Well mannered and disciplined children will end up having good character when they grow up. So it’s essential to inculcate good manners and discipline through real life examples, stories from books.

Sharing

With nuclear families and single child in vogue, the chance to learn to share is hardly there. Since both parents are working and try to compensate their inability to be the child through gifts, toys etc. Getting what they want and with no need to share, the children get self centric. This becomes a major problem when they grow up. To avoid this, the children should be allowed to mingle with other children especially with the less privileged so that they learn to care and share.

Responsibility of Own Action

The children should be taught from the childhood to take responsibility of their own actions. This will go a long way in shaping them into responsible adults. Any credit for good deed of the child should be duly given and appropriate punishment for the wrong deed.

Love

It’s easy to love near and ones but everyone is difficult. The child should be taught to give unconditional love to the humans and the animals around. The children should learn to forgive and forget mistakes to grow to be happy individuals.