6 Ways to Guide Your Child's Moral Character

In today’s technical world of computers and virtual reality where our children are socially interacting with video games, myspace, facebook and twitter real action takes a back seat to virtual action.

If you are a parent it is important to create and enforce consequences that are real action based. Thinking and doing create the imprint of your child’s future behavior. Impress on your child the importance of responsibility by providing them guidelines and supporting their actions to rectify their negative behavior. When your child becomes part of creating the restitution and implements the action to right the wrong it will create a life long effect and build moral character.

The following are 6 simple guidelines to remember when helping your child build a moral character:

1.) If you abuse it you lose it. This includes privileges of curfew, TV, video games, etc. Make sure to announce a concrete end date to the loss of their privilege and stick to it. Never create consequences with no ending, e.g. "it's over when I say so", or "Your grounded until you leave my home".

2.) Be kind to the vendors. This means they must be respectful to the supplier of the goods or the supplies are no longer available. Allow your child the opportunity to rectify their actions by giving an apology if they are disrespectful. Maintain the wrong is not right until the apology is delivered and received.

3.) If they break it, they fix it, to the best of their ability.

4.) If they mess it up, they clean it up, on their own.

5.) If you take something you give it back, double the original value. Remember value can be monetary or personal items.

6.) If they do something mean, they do something nice, directly to the person that was affected

Deliver these guidelines to your child in a direct manner without anger or criticism. Support your child’s ability to take corrective action. Be understanding that the restitution may be difficult for them to do, but insist they follow through. Allow your child the opportunity to create and deliver the corrective action that restores the wrong to right. It is their thought process along with their doing that builds a solid positive moral character.