Instilling Character Values in Young Kids

Character values are what people are identified by, and so, grooming kids with good values is essential for them to grow into good people.

These days, it has become more difficult than ever to have organic communications. Even as a family. Whether it be our schedules getting busier or technology taking up our free time, this growing gap between us makes it challenging to instill core values in children these days.

Where previously, they were free to observe and learn on their own, these days, screens have their eyes occupied. It’s not necessarily wrong for children to be on screen, it’s just a side effect, combined with our busy lives, that they have fewer windows to truly observe and learn from the behaviours of parents and teachers.

Which is why it’s prudent to spend some quality time with our kids, putting in more effort to seize these moments when the opportunity arises. Now, more than ever.

Importance of Core Values

Good, strong character values in your core, shape you into a powerful personality. Integrity and kindness, just being a couple basic aspects of a person, extend into a multitude of good values that come from them like honesty, courage, compassion.

Having good character values also helps out to pave your career paths. People are more likely to get hired if they have good character, which comes from core character values. A person with strong character values comes across as reliable, accountable and responsible. Some of the must-have qualities in a good employee.

Being raised from childhood with strong values instills them into a person, naturally, making it easier for them to navigate through the parts of life that require them. After all, you don’t have to fake it, if it’s already true to you.

Let’s jot down a few key points as to why grooming kids with good core values is essential for parents.

• People are recognised through character
• Good core values make you more approachable and presentable
• Ideal candidates for jobs are people with good core values
• Develops a strong personality.
• Defined through actions

When dealing with difficult situations on their own, character values are what shape the kids’ choices. Basic values like kindness, empathy and patience go a long way and yes, there are many more. These are just some essentials.

These character values, or core values are very prominent in defining a person. The sooner kids learn good values the stronger they’ll grow, becoming good people that can help make things better no matter where they are. That’s not to say it’s pointless to teach these qualities to older kids who may have missed these early on. Afterall, we spend our whole life learning.

Despite not having an age-limit, learning is only possible through willingness to learn. As such, it is extremely important to instill in children from a very young age. Keep reminding them that learning is a lifelong process and helps us evolve. Changing for the better should be encouraged. This will help open their minds to new possibilities, eventually, making them self reliant for learning.

How kids learn these values is not just by verbal instructions, practicing these values in their day to day life is key for them to adapt these values into their core.

Organic Learning and Forced Teaching

Much as it’s necessary, forcing a value on their children can be extremely challenging. When we are certain a behaviour needs to be changed, it’s often unavoidable to confront children directly. However, organic teaching can ease the child into slowly picking up a value. One way to bring this organic teaching into your day-to-day, is by simply implementing them, making sure the kid is observing the behaviour and then, tell them how differently the situation would have gone without using the said value.

A quick example of sharing:

Let’s say in this case, the child is reluctant to share. In this case, the first instinct would naturally be to tell them to share. However, there may be resistance in the direct approach. This is where organically instilling sharing in the child can help better. One way of doing this is by exposing the kid to situations where sharing is implemented. Sometimes the situation must be created.

Sharing food is one of the most common occurrences. For instance, let’s say they are on a trip, and someone has a snack the child particularly likes, the only way to get the snack here is by sharing. Letting the child engage in such situations and then giving them a retrospect, can help them learn the importance of sharing and kindness through first-hand experience. This way, the lesson may stick deeper and longer, since it’s more personal.

Building Values with Everyday Habits

The best way of organically teaching core values to kids is to adapt them into daily life. Every situation where a particular value is used like kindness and kindness in helping someone. Help kids understand it clearly. For example, if your child is naturally talented in a skill and their friends are struggling, rather than showing off, your kid helps them get better. That is humility. It is important to make sure, kids actually understand what they are doing and what it is exactly that’s helping them.

It is recommended taking some time for the family to gather and learn about their child’s day. Then, breaking down their particular experience that showcased a specific value, and, course-correcting if an experience was missing a value. These organic ‘trial and error’ style conversations can help ease kids into understanding values.

Some Essentials (core values):

• Kindness. It can be simple acts like helping someone cross the road, or getting someone a glass of water.
• Empathy. It is feeling someone else’s emotions, understanding what they feel on a deeper level. It can help children understand a person and see their perspective.
• Accountability. As one of the simpler values, accountability can be tricky to maintain but is important to be reliable. For kids, it can be as simple as finishing their homework on time, owning up if they make a mistake and being responsible overall.
• Humility. This is another tricky value especially for kids. It’s basically just being humble, not showing off unnecessarily but that doesn’t mean suppressing your talent. It just means to know the time and place for using your talent.
• Perseverance. This is simple but can be challenging to sustain. However, that’s exactly what it is-Not giving up. Consistency and persistence are key to developing perseverance.
• Courage. As the saying goes, it’s not the absence of fear. It’s feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Courage can be difficult to develop but taking small steps can help make it easier.

A lot of the core values can be a byproduct of one or the other and are interrelated. For example, developing kindness can automatically develop empathy too. Developing courage can instill perseverance and vice versa.

Cornerstone of Development

Character values shape not only the children but also the person they grow up to become. As such, it would be right to include them as a cornerstone of their development. Which is why it’s prudent to groom and coax the kids into adults with good core character values and virtues. They are an identification, something people will remember them by. Something that will be connected with not only their names but their existence itself.

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