You may feel pretty secure in knowing what you value and what you are trying to pass on to your child—but does your child know? Often, we just assume that our children will absorb our values and learn to see the world the way we want them too. Of course, our children do develop into people of their own with their own minds and values, but how will they know what WE value, unless we share that with them?
Recently, I reacted to something one my children said by saying, “We’re not that sort of a family!” and she answered with, “How would I know that?” It got me to thinking that sharing our values is something we parents need to do out in the open. After all, we teach them about stranger safety and how to cross the street; we have open lessons about how to work the washing machine and make scrambled eggs—shouldn’t we have open and honest discussions about what are deepest held values are too? We have to find ways to repeatedly teach and share our values with our kids.
Like most important lessons with our children, chances are we will need to share our values over and over again as the years pass. Of course this does not guarantee that our children will take on our same values—but that really isn’t the point. As parents, we can only do our best and try to help our children grow into kind, caring, independently-thinking adults. And, part of that independence will be that they will choose their own values. By making sure that we “wear” our values out in the open, however, we will know that we did our best to share our beliefs with our kids and didn’t keep our values tucked away as a great, mysterious, family secret.
Also: Can You Help a Child Get a Conscience?
Tolerating Different Values and Opinions Within a Family
Keeping Personal Experience in Perspective