It’S Time To Teach Moral Instruction

Q. What’s the best way for parents to teach morality? We want our 3-year-old to behave properly, but we also want him to understand the “why” behind good behavior.

A. The best way of teaching the difference between right and wrong — the crux of morality — is to be examples of moral living yourselves. With everything you do that your son witnesses, with everything you say that he hears, you have opportunity to provide moral instruction. You teach compassion by being compassionate, you teach honesty by being honest, and so on.

Nonetheless, parents do not, by themselves, determine whether a child grows up to be a basically moral individual. There are plenty of examples of children who become criminals despite being raised by morally upright parents and children who become moral pillars despite being raised by parents with highly questionable morals.

As Grandma was wont to say, “A child has a mind of his own,” which simply means parents are not the sole “cause” of how a child behaves, now or later. Grandma believed, as do I, that when all is said and done, a child’s behavior is a matter of free will; i.e., choice. Parents, peers, biology and the environment all influence, but there is no determinant stronger than the child’s free will.

Perhaps the most opportune time for moral instruction occurs when a child has misbehaved, as every child will. The best mode of instruction is punishment. I am exceedingly aware that what I’ve just said is not consistent with the modern, romantic view of children and child rearing. The latter-day view holds that a child can be reasoned and/or rewarded into behaving properly.

That might be so if children were reasonable, but they are not. Reasons and explanations alone work only with someone who is fairly well socialized. Until then, words will go in one ear and out the other.

Rewards might work if children were naturally inclined toward pro-social behavior, but they are not. They are inclined toward narcissistic behavior. Should parents give reasons and praise? Absolutely. But reasons and praise are only one side of the socialization equation.

Parents can begin teaching social values when a child is around 2 years old. Initially, the toddler learns to behave “rightly” because his parents punish him when he doesn’t. By punishing effectively — consistently and in ways that produce lasting memory (not necessarily, but perhaps, including spankings) — parents assist the child toward separating the “chaff” of misbehavior from the “wheat” of good behavior.

As he learns to pay attention to them, his parents can rely more and more on verbal instruction. Reasons and praise can never fully substitute for punishment, even when the child becomes an adult. Even the most outwardly moral adult harbors a child within, and the only thing that keeps the Everlasting Narcissist in check is fear of consequences.

Again, that’s not the romantic view. It’s the view that got us this far.