The 3 steps to raising a moral child

“I just couldn’t believe it was true. I couldn’t imagine Liam saying or doing things like that. I thought they were lying, or at least exaggerating what happened’. Stephanie, mother of Liam, 8 years, talks about first hearing about her son bullying another child at school. “It wasn’t till I saw Liam behaving like this at a birthday party that I realised something was wrong. I was in shock when I saw him yelling and being disrespectful to the other children and adults”
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Stephanie describes feeling disappointed and guilty about Liam’s behaviour.  “My husband and I worked hard to raise him with good morals and values. To see him become like this, it felt like we had failed” To help Liam, Stephanie and her husband decided to become stricter with him at home. “We used a lot of consequences and discipline, but it only made things worse. He was becoming disrespectful to us. We didn’t know what else to do with him. ”

​1 in 10 children will exhibit behavioural problems by the age of 18. Research has consistently found that behavioural development in children is strongly influenced by the nature of the child-parent relationship. In particular, research has found that parents who are effective at using positive communication strategies (and not punishment and limit-setting alone) have children who are well-adjusted socially, emotionally and academically.
 
So how can parents help?
 
While poor behaviour can be hard for parents to manage, such behaviour present parents with a unique opportunity to positively reinforce good morals and values in their children. Value affirmation is a strategy for parents to help their children with skills in acting in prosocial ways. Value affirmation consists of three parts:

1. Creating opportunities to demonstrate values in action: Opportunities to engage in prosocial activities, like helping a neighbour, or raising money for a charity, parents can help children develop their self-esteem and ability to act in accordance to the family’s values and beliefs.
2. Praise and reinforce moral behaviour: Instead of only focusing on incidences of misbehaviour, parents can shape children’s behaviour by spotting and praising them for prosocial, moral behaviour. Stephanie describes her experience of using this strategy, “At first we thought, ‘why are we being nice to him when he’s been naughty/’ and ‘isn’t this a reward?’ But as we started doing this, we noticed a difference. Liam was more eager to please us and be praised by us”.
3. Supporting learning from misbehaviour: “When I catch Liam doing the wrong thing, its hard to stay calm and explain things to him. By using this strategy, I found that I was clear about my values, and what I wanted to teach him. I think for Liam, he learnt why he was in trouble and why we were not happy with him.” Stephanie describes using value affirmation to help Liam learn from his misbehaviour. “I found that I didn’t get so angry and didn’t give him long lectures. For us, we realised it’s not enough for him to just remember good morals and values. He needed to learn through his actions. By thinking and talking to us”

Stephanie has used value affirmation with success with Liam. “At first we thought that Liam would grow out of it. That all boys go through this phase. But as parents, we can’t simply wish these problems away for our kids. As a parent, I wanted to take charge of the man my son was going to become. We can’t leave these things to chance – children need our help to become adults with good values, beliefs and morals. I would recommend the value affirmation strategy for every parent”.