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Raising a moral child

nytimes.com

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Re: Raising a moral child

#21

Post by VLM »

mrcactu5 wrote: post #3

I grew up and live in New York City - where people are not very caring. But how do we measure that? In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values. How do you quantify kindness and compassion?

Confusing "valuing" and "are". For mere valuing a simple survey should be adequate.

An analogy would be valuing wealth while being poor. Or innumerable examples of reportedly valuing a certain religion's beliefs, yet ridiculously bad, often opposite, implementation of those beliefs.

Re: Raising a moral child

#22

Post by breitling »

There's a lot of overlap here with what Paul Tough says in his book "How children succeed". Basically he also emphasizes the focus on a child's character, but to an extent that they regularly get graded on their character not just their performance academically.

It's a great read: http://www.amazon.com/How-Children-Succeed-Curiosity-Charact...

Re: Raising a moral child

#23

Post by tel »

fit2rule wrote: post #11
cstavish wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would have thought that 21-month-olds are predisposed to Kantian ethics?

Philosophy: how does it work? Hint: its true even if babies haven't figured it out yet.

Well, should you take a cultural relativist POV then there's nothing "true" about Kantian ethics—it's a choice of values. It's interesting to see 21mo behavior selecting for those values.

If you take the deontological view then this is still a fairly complex behavior to execute. To consider whether this sort of judgement is one that should be fairly placed on the 21mo if it did the same is a challenging mental task.

So, perhaps babies are predisposed to heuristics which favor the categorical imperative. That'd be interesting and certainly worth surprise.

Re: Raising a moral child

#24

Post by dominotw »

mherdeg wrote: post #18
sharemywin wrote: post #12

I didn't get the don't be a cheater part. seemed like that would cause shame instead of guilt and confilted with the rule praise the child as a good person. expect them to do better when they do bad and seperate the bad action with fromt the good person. With hard worker being a good trait.

Sure, so the author's advice boils down to: (1) If your child does something good, DO tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does good things (praise character). DON'T let them think that they're merely a person who did a good thing (praise behavior). (2) If your child does something bad, DON'T tell them that they are showing traits of a person who does bad things (shame). DO tell them that they did a…

This is exactly how my train my dog too.

Re: Raising a moral child

#25

Post by freditup »

"A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person."

Probably true, but there's an alternate explanation I think. Praising their character invokes a feel-good, I'm a good person, pride response. Praising their action doesn't nearly as much. People like the reward of the 'I'm a great person' feeling and thus are more likely to be nice if this is the result.

Re: Raising a moral child

#26

Post by jessedhillon »

cstavish wrote: post #9
jawns wrote: post #4

The experiments this op-ed describes are really neat. I especially like the one that demonstrates the importance of "practice what you preach." Here's another cool experiment related to social/moral development, which you can perform on your own kid: Have two grown-up friends each show your baby a toy. The first friend should offer the toy to your kid but then retract the offer and keep the toy to himself. The second…

Who would have thought that 21-month-olds are predisposed to Kantian ethics?

Or could you say they're enacting a tit-for-tat strategy?

Re: Raising a moral child

#27

Post by jcampbell1 »

jawns wrote: post #4

The experiments this op-ed describes are really neat. I especially like the one that demonstrates the importance of "practice what you preach." Here's another cool experiment related to social/moral development, which you can perform on your own kid: Have two grown-up friends each show your baby a toy. The first friend should offer the toy to your kid but then retract the offer and keep the toy to himself. The second…

I don't understand this at all. At 21 months, a toddler can walk and talk, and you can play keep away with them for fun. I don't know what it means to drop a toy out of reach. Do you drop it on a high counter or something?

Re: Raising a moral child

#29

Post by Spooky23 »

sergiotapia wrote: post #16
taybin wrote: post #13

Oh good. More ways I can mis-raise my child. I complimented the object instead of the subject in a sentence! Oh shiiiiiiit. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2014/03/new-par...

Don't know why you're being downvoted. As a parent, every single time I read something about 'raising your kids X', Dr. Lipschitz (from The Rugrats) comes to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTesmh1wpI

Probably because most of this is common sense that you do anyway. Generally speaking, you don't tell you child that he's and evil human being because he didn't pick up his toys.

But you want a kid to self-identify as a "good" person, and do what good people do. For most folks, this stuff either happens pretty naturally, or the parents adapt as their kid learns how to game them.

Re: Raising a moral child

#30

Post by hypertexthero »

One can start by not associating oneself (and thus one's child) with words such as 'Israeli', 'British', 'Catholic', 'Hindu', 'Communist', etc.

"The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time." -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

[Think on These Things, Chapter 1](http://www.jiddu-krishnamurti.net/en/think-on-these-things/1...)

[Some info from UNSECO Bureau of Education on Krishnamurti](http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/krishnamu...)

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