Moral education can be a bit intimidating for many parents, but the process of teaching good values to your kids can be started early with small steps. From donating to charity to caring for the environment, there are several ways to instruct and model behavior that will shape your kids’ approach to the world around them.
Get Involved in Your Community
Getting involved in the community around you is a highly effective tool for showing your children how to live in accordance with your values. If you tell your children that it’s important to care about other people and to serve others, there’s no better way to back that up than by getting involved in your local community and being a role model for compassion and generosity.
Show How Easy Donating Can Be
Donating to charity is a great way to teach kids about generosity and kindness to others—it can also show children that it’s rewarding to think beyond themselves and put other people’s feelings at a high priority, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Apps like Coin Up make it easy to give small amounts of money to charity on a regular basis. You can get your kids in on the fun by making a donation chart to show the running total tally for how much you’ve given by simply rounding up on everyday purchases.
You can further encourage charitable giving by asking grandparents and other relatives who give cash gifts to match or split the gift and give part to a charity of the child’s choice. Donating old clothes, books, toys, and sports equipment can also be a way of showing that sacrificing something you want can be worthwhile if it improves someone else’s life.
Set Good Routines at Home
If environmental ethics are important in your family, showing your kids how to take care of chores and other tasks around the house can be a good way of setting them up for values-based success later in life. Living in a greener way sets an example and instills habits in children that they’ll take with them for the rest of their lives. This can mean everything from taking shorter showers and turning off lights to composting and growing vegetables in the backyard. Just make sure you’re practicing what you preach so your kids see the good behavior in action.
Read Fiction
This may come as a surprise, but reading literature actually can instill positive values in kids. One study showed that children who read the Harry Potter series displayed more empathy than peers who didn’t read that magical series. There’s plenty of other evidence to suggest that fiction is a useful tool for teaching kids how to see the world from another person’s perspective. That kind of empathy is the bedrock for values such as courtesy, patience, and generosity. Try reading with your kid or having a book club so you can discuss the lessons learned from literature together.
