Raising Honorable Children
Family Discussion Guide
 

No wonder it's difficult these days for children to grow up amidst the storms in our turbulent society. And no wonder that so many of us wring our hands and worry in the stillness of the night or fret in the fast-paced lives we lead. And yet there are solutions that each of us can implement. 

Feelings of helplessness plague us as we see our young children being taught the very lessons that we don't want them to learn from their peers, the media and a variety of other sources. 

As parents and individuals who care for our youth, it is critical that we make the commitment to our children to help them learn the time-tested, generations-old, universally agreed-upon virtues of good character. No other institution, but the family can pass the baton of these virtues as meaningfully and comfortably as the family. It is within these individual patchwork quilts of common history, loving and familiar environments that the universal foundations of strong human character - empathy, responsibility, caring, trust and honesty - with which these virtues are woven truly lies.

Honor

Honor can be defined in many ways. An appropriate definition for this Parent Connection program is "one whose worth brings respect" (Unell and Wyckoff, 1995).

Family Activity

How is an honorable child defined by:

• Your family?
• Extended family?
• Faith based involvement?
• Society?

Currently, talk about virtue, values, morals and character has emerged in the forefront of movement for social change. However, it is important to understand that these traits must be taught rather than talked. 

Because children are fairly concrete in their view of the world, it is difficult to teach them concepts that are too abstract. There are proven ways children learn behaviors that can be used to teach virtues to them. To become good teachers of behavior, parents can use the following steps as guidelines:

1. Set goals for the children to achieve.

2. Define the behaviors that they will need to reach the goals.

3. Model the behaviors so the children will have a mental image of what they are.

4. Encourage the children's practice of the behaviors.

5. Reinforce the practice through the use of praise and privileges.

6. Observe the children in order to decide whether the behaviors have been learned.

 

Essential to the teaching of virtues is ability to reflect on life's experiences. Learning from experiences depends on the ability to reflect on those experiences and to develop new, more appropriate ways of behaving. With our responses to experiences limited to emotion, we end up with the image of virtue without having virtues as a part of our way of life. 

Teaching these virtues to your children begins with the awareness that they are the basis of your own definition of good character. Notice how you react when someone give you back more change than you were due at the grocery store. What do you say when someone calls and wants to talk when you're in the middle of dinner or other personal activities?

How do you respond when your son arrives ten minutes later than the time when you were supposed to pick him up? 

Establishing your own personal living standards and living by those standards involves no magic, only the setting of priorities and the active choosing of moral and ethical ways of behaving over the self-centered, what's-in-it-for-me, win-at-all-costs approach to life that has become the vogue.Ý Virtues are not taught by force-feeding. In fact, just the opposite is true. The teaching of virtues is undertaken in the everyday interactions with children: during the jaunt to the shopping center, standing in line at the fast-food restaurant, traveling full tilt to ball practice.

So if it's so easy to do, this practicing of virtues, why don't more of us do it? Because it takes considerable effort - hard work - to discipline ourselves to do so.

It is a proven fact that the lessons of virtue are best learned from those who practice what they teach. Changing your behaviors from what you learned about parenting as a child to what you want to pass on to your children can be accomplished if you open your mind and heart to these lessons that have been passed on for generations but may, in fact, be new to you. By putting new "deposits" in your "teaching bank" by reading this guide, you are making that first investment. 

Discussion Questions

• How do families teach/model honorable behavior?
• How can families reinforce their own concepts of honorable behavior?
• How can families manage the influence of the media?
• What do parents do when their child's peers do not hold the same standards as your family?
• What should be the consequences of behavior that is not honorable?