Raising a Moral Child
What does it take to be a good parent? We know some of the tricks for teaching kids to become high achievers. For example, research suggests that when parents praise effort rather than ability, children develop a stronger work ethic and become more motivated.
Yet
although some parents live vicariously through their children’s
accomplishments, success is not the No. 1 priority for most parents.
We’re much more concerned about our children becoming kind,
compassionate and helpful. Surveys reveal
that in the United States, parents from European, Asian, Hispanic and
African ethnic groups all place far greater importance on caring than
achievement. These patterns hold around the world: When people in 50
countries were asked to report their guiding principles in life, the value that mattered most was not achievement, but caring.
Despite the significance that it holds in our lives, teaching children to care about others is no simple task. In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values.
Are
some children simply good-natured — or not? For the past decade, I’ve
been studying the surprising success of people who frequently help
others without any strings attached. As the father of two daughters and a
son, I’ve become increasingly curious about how these generous
tendencies develop.
Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more than half
of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited. That leaves a
lot of room for nurture, and the evidence on how parents raise kind and
compassionate children flies in the face of what many of even the most
well-intentioned parents do in praising good behavior, responding to bad
behavior, and communicating their values.
By
age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by
right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates,
praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading
children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise
communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake.
But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early
signs of generosity?
Many
parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the
child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I
know one couple who are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing
to do,” instead of, “You’re a helpful person.”
But is that the right approach? In a clever experiment,
the researchers Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler set out to investigate
what happens when we commend generous behavior versus generous
character. After 7- and 8-year-olds won marbles and donated some to poor
children, the experimenter remarked, “Gee, you shared quite a bit.”
The
researchers randomly assigned the children to receive different types
of praise. For some of the children, they praised the action: “It was
good that you gave some of your marbles to those poor children. Yes,
that was a nice and helpful thing to do.” For others, they praised the
character behind the action: “I guess you’re the kind of person who
likes to help others whenever you can. Yes, you are a very nice and
helpful person.”
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. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist
Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work
better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half
when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please
don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our
character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices.
Over time it can become part of us.
When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us.
Praise
appears to be particularly influential in the critical periods when
children develop a stronger sense of identity. When the researchers Joan
E. Grusec and Erica Redler praised the character of 5-year-olds, any
benefits that may have emerged didn’t have a lasting impact: They may
have been too young to internalize moral character as part of a stable
sense of self. And by the time children turned 10, the differences
between praising character and praising actions vanished: Both were
effective. Tying generosity to character appears to matter most around
age 8, when children may be starting to crystallize notions of identity.
Praise
in response to good behavior may be half the battle, but our responses
to bad behavior have consequences, too. When children cause harm, they
typically feel one of two moral emotions: shame or guilt. Despite the
common belief that these emotions are interchangeable, research led by the psychologist June Price Tangney reveals that they have very different causes and consequences.
Shame
is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the feeling
that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about the
core self, which is devastating: Shame makes children feel small and
worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or
escaping the situation altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative
judgment about an action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When
children feel guilt, they tend to experience remorse and regret,
empathize with the person they have harmed, and aim to make it right.
In one study spearheaded by the psychologist Karen Caplovitz Barrett,
parents rated their toddlers’ tendencies to experience shame and guilt
at home. The toddlers received a rag doll, and the leg fell off while
they were playing with it alone. The shame-prone toddlers avoided the
researcher and did not volunteer that they broke the doll. The
guilt-prone toddlers were more likely to fix the doll, approach the
experimenter, and explain what happened. The ashamed toddlers were
avoiders; the guilty toddlers were amenders.
If we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave. In a review of research on emotions and moral development,
the psychologist Nancy Eisenberg suggests that shame emerges when
parents express anger, withdraw their love, or try to assert their power
through threats of punishment: Children may begin to believe that they
are bad people. Fearing this effect, some parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development of strong moral standards.
The most effective response to bad behavior is to express disappointment. According to independent reviews by Professor Eisenberg and David R. Shaffer,
parents raise caring children by expressing disappointment and
explaining why the behavior was wrong, how it affected others, and how
they can rectify the situation. This enables children to develop
standards for judging their actions, feelings of empathy and
responsibility for others, and a sense of moral identity, which are conducive to becoming a helpful person.
The beauty of expressing disappointment is that it communicates
disapproval of the bad behavior, coupled with high expectations and the
potential for improvement: “You’re a good person, even if you did a bad
thing, and I know you can do better.”
As
powerful as it is to criticize bad behavior and praise good character,
raising a generous child involves more than waiting for opportunities to
react to the actions of our children. As parents, we want to be
proactive in communicating our values to our children. Yet many of us do
this the wrong way.
In a classic experiment,
the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton gave 140 elementary- and
middle-school-age children tokens for winning a game, which they could
keep entirely or donate some to a child in poverty. They first watched a
teacher figure play the game either selfishly or generously, and then
preach to them the value of taking, giving or neither. The adult’s
influence was significant: Actions spoke louder than words. When the
adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words didn’t make
much difference — children gave fewer tokens after observing the adult’s
selfish actions, regardless of whether the adult verbally advocated
selfishness or generosity. When the adult acted generously, students
gave the same amount whether generosity was preached or not — they
donated 85 percent more than the norm in both cases. When the adult
preached selfishness, even after the adult acted generously, the
students still gave 49 percent more than the norm. Children learn
generosity not by listening to what their role models say, but by
observing what they do.
To
test whether these role-modeling effects persisted over time, two
months later researchers observed the children playing the game again.
Would the modeling or the preaching influence whether the children gave —
and would they even remember it from two months earlier?
The
most generous children were those who watched the teacher give but not
say anything. Two months later, these children were 31 percent more
generous than those who observed the same behavior but also heard it
preached. The message from this research is loud and clear: If you don’t
model generosity, preaching it may not help in the short run, and in
the long run, preaching is less effective than giving while saying
nothing at all.
People
often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to
producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes
character. As the psychologist Karl Weick is fond of asking, “How can I know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I see where I walk?”