Raising Good Kids

Who’s Responsible

A guy I knew growing up used to smash up an average of one Corvette a summer. His father was rich and well-connected in their small town. The "Old Man" always managed to get the kid off the hook. No report. Nothing on his driving record. As if it never happened. Though his old man is long gone, I hear this guy is still looking for the easy way out.

Compare that to a friend of mine in grammar school who was goofing off in class one day to impress the girls. Some other poor jamoke was nailed for the misdeed and was told he’d be staying after school. My friend squirmed in his seat awhile but soon raised his hand. "I started it, Sister," he confessed. I still admire that friend to this day.

William Damon, author of The Moral Child: Nurturing Children’s Natural Moral Growth (Free Press, 1988), says, ‘There is no more effective facilitator of moral development than fostering children’s willingness to take responsibility for good and bad deeds."

In a culture where our top leaders–whether corporate or government or, sadly, even church leaders–are told by their high-priced advisers to "Deny, deny, deny!," it is truly countercultural to train your children to own up to their own behaviors.

We’re all created with a built-in capacity to rationalize even the most outrageous behavior. Perhaps you remember comedian Flip Wilson’s "The Devil made me do it!" routine. Children need help, coaching, and much practice in accepting the truth about the intent as well as the consequences of their behavior. "I didn’t mean to take the last piece of candy. But it looked so small I knew no one else would want to eat it."

Daily life offers countless opportunities to either call your children to responsibility or to let them slide. Opportunities can range from the mundane ("Who left less than an ounce of lemonade in the container and didn’t replace it?") to the serious ("Mrs. Smith, your daughter played a prank on a classmate and she’s quite upset.") to the very serious ("Clifford, the police have reason to suspect you were involved in vandalizing the Randall’s garage.") The point is not to grill the students like a homicide suspect, but to regularly invite your children to grow in moral awareness and habits of good character. Damon suggests these three steps:

*Share your moral reactions to situations in your own life. Don’t shield your kids from life’s moral uncertainties; to the extend they’re capable, tell your kids about the difficult moral decision you have to make at work, how you struggled with honesty on your taxes, or how your disagree with a movie character’s actions in a film you’re both watching. Kids need to know that being human means wrestling with moral issues and that the important adults in their life take that function seriously.

*Encourage children to recognize their own moral feelings and discuss them with you. "Parents and other adults are more accustomed to giving children directives than to asking children about their own (moral) feelings," says Damon. And once your children have become attuned to their own emotional reactions, they can tune in to the feelings and reactions of others.

*Entrust your children with serious moral responsibilities as soon as they are ready and able to perform them. Telling the truth, returning a friend’s toy in good condition, and being kind and considerate of others are all tasks even young children can take one. In this way moral responsibility can become habitual from an early age, and they way will be paved for the development of sturdy moral character.

Damon says, "The only satisfactory means of training responsibility in our young is to offer them serious opportunities to assume such responsibility, sharing with them the full expectation that they indeed will do so."

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