Key Moments A Moral Compass Children Learn Values Best Through Real-Life Experiences, And That Can Both Reassure And Frighten Parents.

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Hugs. Sheets and towels. Frantic bits of last-minute advice.

These are among the supplies we give our children as they make the final trek between adolescence and independence, leaving home for college, a first apartment or a new job.

The most critical going-away gift, though, has been in the making for about 18 years: an internal moral compass that will guide these young adults through a lifetime of confusing and complex choices.

Such compasses are created bit by bit, through a conversation here, an example there, sometimes intentional (father talks to son about honesty) but not always (son sees father cheat on tax return).

Ultimately, the needle will swing one direction or another based on values instilled over the early years along the path to adulthood.

Richard Eyre, a Salt Lake City parenting expert, says children are high-powered values vacuums, inhaling whatever values are most prevalent in their lives.

“Parents are scared. They know children will suck in values from their peer group, the Internet, television shows, movies, music and rap songs. So, as a parent, you’ve got to overwhelm them with your values. It’s a war of influence,” says Eyre, who co-wrote the book “Teaching Your Children Values” with his wife, Linda Eyre.

The good news: Life offers ample opportunities to develop long-lasting values in children. When bonding with a baby, a tender caregiver can teach basic concepts of love, kindness and sensitivity. Adults can encourage self-discipline and sexual fidelity long before teens are tempted with risky rites of passage such as binge drinking, drug use and early sex. Even times of loss, such as divorce or the death of a family member, can become opportunities to build a child’s inner strength and courage.

But in today’s war of influence, parents should map out their strategy before others step in to fill the void.

“The people who are teaching values to children aren’t really trying to teach values - they’re trying to sell products. The people who care about teaching values to children are often working parents away from children 10 hours a day or grandparents who care but see their grandchildren once a year,” says Mary Pipher, author of the book “The Shelter of Each Other: Rebuilding Our Families.”

“Children are being socialized by boxes - TVs, computers, video games - and because of that, all the world’s children are learning very different matters than we used to teach them.”

Baby boomers have produced a generation of children who range from extremely altruistic to apathetic or worse. Schools, churches and kid-centered organizations are steering thousands of children into community service, from visiting neighborhood nursing homes to building houses in Tijuana. Since 1984, the number of students involved in service-related programs has soared from 900,000 to 12.6 million, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Yet, juvenile detention centers are filled with kids whose moral compasses have pointed them in another direction.

“There are some kids who are just incredibly inspiring to be around because they’re so motivated by good values or trying to build up their community,” says William Damon, director of Stanford University’s Center on Adolescence. “But there are a lot of kids who aren’t doing that, who’ve found nothing to believe in.”

Some parents and teachers still pass down the 1960s mentality of “do your own thing, avoid stress, make yourself happy and that sort of stuff,” says Damon. “Those are the kids who aren’t tuning in.”

How do we begin to create good people? Kids whose actions routinely help and don’t hurt others? Children who will grow up to pass those values along to the next generation?

The first step is to start early. Kids seem to be born with a natural capacity for empathy, but parental nurturing helps it flourish, Damon says.

Young children often do good simply because it pleases their caregivers. They’re motivated by rewards and punishment, perhaps aiming to get that extra cookie or trying to avoid a timeout.

By age 4 or 5, kids begin to internalize the values of family and culture, says Carol Lindsay, child development instructor at North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene.

“They start to lose some of their egocentrism and look outward a little bit to what do my peers find acceptable or not acceptable,” says Lindsay.

Yet, the standards still aren’t their own.

Barb Swindler teaches her young daughters patience and compassion by befriending older people who need help getting around. Swindler expects Grace, who’s 3, and Olivia, 7, to become young women who appreciate and care for older people.

The lessons seep in subtly: during family dinners when 80-year-old Virginia Haglund is guest of honor, at the YWCA where Haglund helps teach the girls to swim. The retired housecleaner also plays card games with Grace and Olivia and tells tales of her own childhood.

“They need to learn to respect and value the elderly in the community,” says Swindler, whose family lives on Spokane’s South Hill. “The elderly have so much to teach and so many stories to share.”

Some of the lessons are tough but important, says Swindler, recalling the death of another elderly family friend. “It taught that life does end. Before that, we only had a goldfish that died.”

Children learn values best through these kind of real-life experiences — not curricula or lectures — and that can both reassure and frighten parents. Kids are learning when parents lie about their child’s age to get cheaper movie tickets, just as they’re learning when parents take a casserole to a sick neighbor.

“You pass on the wisdom of a culture by osmosis, by kids hanging around with adults and watching them make decisions,” says Peter Benson, director of Search Institute in Minneapolis. “We’re a culture largely driven by economy, work success, attainment and achievement. (We’re) forgetting how crucial relationships are.”

April and Ron VanDyke steer their three daughters toward relationships that reinforce the rural Spokane family’s values. The girls learn core values in church, and they get lots of practice applying them through activities sponsored by 4-H, Pony Club and Camp Fire Boys and Girls, says April VanDyke. “It gives them the confidence they need to personally go out into the world and make a difference.”

Shari, who’s 17, practiced self-discipline when showing horses that seemed to enjoy throwing her in front of a crowd. Fourteen-year-old Lynette learned to congratulate kids who outperformed her and her border collie, Pokey, in obedience competitions. Training the dog took patience and practice.

But after three years, Lynette has earned her share of ribbons, self-discipline and confidence. “If you lose one time, just keep at it and try to get better at it,” she says now.

That sort of self-discipline is eroding among kids as a group, says Richard Eyre, the Salt Lake City author. Overall, today’s kids are more honest and more tolerant of other people’s beliefs and ethnicity, he says, but the values of self-discipline and sexual fidelity have taken a tumble among many teens.

Half of high school students say they’ve had sexual intercourse, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The real villain is recreational sex. Kids today think of sex like it’s another form of recreation. In the worst case, they’re getting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, and in the best case, they’re damaging themselves emotionally,” Eyre says.

He recommends parents make sex a topic of open discussion and seize opportunities to talk about the effects of hormones and the values of chastity. “The real heart of it should be: Every time you treat sex casually and recreationally, you rob yourself of the beauty a relationship can have when you’re really committed,” he says.

Conversations about chastity and other values should start off simple and become more complex as children grow older. Many kids leap to a higher level of moral thinking around age 13 to 15, North Idaho College’s Lindsay says. As their abstract thinking skills develop, teens are able to more fully consider intangible topics such as values. They begin to form their own identities.

As long as Andy Wittwer can remember, he’s gone out of his way to help people less fortunate. “It’s something I feel God has asked of me,” he says.

A preacher’s kid, Wittwer made community service a regular part of his life — missions to inner-city Los Angeles, feeding the homeless in downtown Spokane. His parents made service at Life Center Foursquare Church a routine part of their lives and expected he would, too.

Then, during his freshman year, Wittwer says, that commitment “became my deal and not my parents’. At the same time, I decided my religion was mine and not theirs.”

Wittwer, a recent graduate of Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, knows it’s no coincidence his values are so similar to his parents’. But now, they’ve become just as real for him.

“I’d really like for the rest of my life to help (people) somehow,” says Wittwer, who is considering a career as a psychologist or social worker. “I just like to know that I’ve maybe brightened a person’s day more than anything else.”

Religion provides a built-in set of values for many other kids, too. A recent Newsweek poll asked teens, “How important is religion in your life today?” Very important, said 43 percent. Somewhat, answered another 35 percent.

Churchgoing parents, regardless of denomination, appreciate a community of friends who reinforce similar values and beliefs for their children. Religion often provides a systematic approach to the teaching of values, too, through classes, worship sessions and youth groups.

“It gives kids a sense of a larger purpose beyond themselves,” says Stanford University’s Damon, who wrote the book “The Moral Child.” “And that helps them get out of themselves and really committed to something important and good.”

Similar benefits can be found at some community centers, in military groups, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and many other organizations, Damon says. The key is finding groups that support your values and then getting involved as a parent.

While parents are helping their kids develop good values, they can test their own compassion by nurturing children whose families may not be as stable. “Anyone can be generous with their own child because that person’s very close to you. But can you be generous to the neighbor down the street who needs help?” challenges Damon. “As you grow in wisdom or values, you extend your generosity to more and more of humanity.”

Generous people changed Mon Ra Muse’s life and gave him potential he never had envisioned as a child. Muse was an angry little boy when his parents, who fought and moved a lot, sent him to live with his grandparents in east Spokane. There, numerous friends made bad choices that led them to build criminal records or quit high school.

Muse, now 25, lists several people who illuminated values that pointed him in a different direction.

John Hook, his former football coach at Lewis and Clark High School, rousted Muse out of bed when he overslept and pushed him to run extra laps to become a winning athlete. His biggest score: self-discipline.

Juanita Everson, a school counselor, taught him that education could change his future. Barber Larry Roseman inspired Muse as a successful African-American businessman. Biology teacher Walt Cubley uttered the words Muse still repeats to himself: “Mon Ra, don’t be mediocre. The hardest thing to live with is regret - knowing you didn’t try.”

Muse did try, earned his associate’s degree and is finishing his bachelor’s degree in social work at Eastern Washington University. His boss at Excelsior Youth Center in Spokane says Muse draws on his childhood struggles to become an understanding counselor for troubled kids.

“I got so much help from so many people, I figured it’d be unfair if I didn’t help kids,” says Muse.

Diligent parents and other concerned adults can create people with values who make communities better places to live.

Pipher, a Nebraska psychologist, tells parents: “If you want to survive in 2000, you have to do two things. You have to protect your children from what’s ugly and noxious in the culture and connect your children to what’s good and beautiful.

“Part of being a parent is figuring out for yourself what that is.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: Where to turn

Good values are constructed a block at a time. Here are some starting points:

* Steer kids toward responsibilities that give them the chance to help other people. This could include activities from baby-sitting to doing housework to visiting nursing home residents.

* Find books that promote good values and read them with young children. As children grow, encourage them to continue reading such stories on their own. Readings can include fables, religious passages, “The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories” by William J. Bennett, and many other books.

* Present kids with make-believe moral dilemmas and ask them how they’d handle the situations. It’s good practice for children and gives parents another teaching method. Studies show such discussions help develop kids’ moral reasoning.

* Foster independent thinking in your children so they’re able to resist conforming to peers’ conflicting values. Praise your kids for moral behavior.

* Guide them around unhealthy cultural values. In a world where instant gratification is valued, for instance, encourage them to set fulfilling, long-term goals and keep them. Enlist the help of mentors, counselors, church leaders and older relatives.

* Seek out good role models and “heroes” for children. Look for virtuous people who have proved themselves over the years. When a role model stumbles, talk to kids about what went wrong and how a fall could have been avoided.

* Model your own values carefully. Adolescents are quick to pinpoint the most minor incongruities in what adults say and what they do. Your actions are the most powerful lesson in values you can give to children.