Building Your Child's Character

Building Your Child's Character We live in a time when teaching our children to be virtuous is especially challenging. Youngsters are surrounded by political sound-bites; outlandish promises from advertisers; and television programming and films filled with lying, gratuitous violence and sex as entertainment. As a parent, you might feel weary and overwhelmed as you try to help your children develop virtues such as honesty, respect for themselves and others, humility, courage and a generous rather than greedy heart. You're not alone. The challenge of helping humans develop high moral character has perplexed philosophers, psychologists and theologians for centuries. Children are born with unique temperaments, needs and gifts. Some find it much easier to share their toys than others. Some feel horrible when they lie, while others seem to delight in deception. Some are timid; others show amazing courage and tenacity. But, no matter where children are born on these continuums, they have the potential to develop good character and become positive contributors to society. In fact, Aristotle, who wrote of such things about 350 B.C.E., believed humans were born to become virtuous, mature adults - to be pillars of virtue for those younger or less developed than we are. And Immanuel Kant, writing some 2,000 years later, added his view that for an act to be truly virtuous, it had to be hard for us to do; it couldn't just come naturally.