Character Education

Everyone learns from their mistakes-if we didn’t, humanity certainly wouldn’t have come as far as it has! However, your mistakes don’t just have to be an inconvenient learning method for you. As you go about teaching character to your children, you can use your own mistakes to improve their understanding of different character traits and how they affect people. Young kids often grow up thinking their parents are infallible. However, this isn’t always healthy. It establishes an unattainable goal for children. If they instead learn that parents make mistakes and deal with those mistakes gracefully, they will know how to deal with the snafus life inevitably will deal them.

Teaching character involves teaching a variety of strong character traits to kids; some of the traits commonly reinforced are kindness, respect, and gratefulness. Learning about these in school is important, but helping them learn these lessons at home will make the message stick.

Kindness is a huge part of being a good person and a productive member of society. Kids learn this fairly early on when they see the effects bullies have on their schools. However, we all falter in kindness eventually, whether it is due to lack of sleep, frustration with a situation, or a previously existing circumstance. Your children aren’t blind to these lapses in judgment you show. If you happen to snap at them or someone else in an unkind moment, apologize and then make amends. If they are the ones you snapped at, tell them that you didn’t mean to hurt their feelings and that nothing they did caused you to snap at them. If it’s someone else you snap at, no matter how uncomfortable it may be to do so, go back and apologize. When your children see this, they will realize that kindness comes before pride and they will apply that in their own lives.

Respect is very important to everyone-everyone you encounter, from teachers, to coworkers, to friends and family, is deserving of respect. However, sometimes you may feel so angry or shocked by someone’s behavior or words that your respect for them lapses. If you catch yourself disparaging someone to your children, take a deep breath and step back. Acknowledge to your kids that what you did is just wrong, and that talking about somebody like that disrespects them. If they seem unsure, ask them if they would want someone to talk about them like that-since no one wants to be talked about negatively, that point will hit home with them.

Gratefulness is a huge part of character education that we all forget! We take so many things in life for granted that we may forget how lucky we are to have them. If someone does something kind for you, but not in the way you would prefer, it’s easy to look over the kind act to the mistake. The next time you growl at your spouse for bringing home flowers, but a kind that you hate rather than your favorites, create a teaching moment. Tell your kids that what you did was wrong, and then turn around and thank your spouse. Give them a big hug for thinking of you.

Your mistakes can be much more than just something you want to forget! Create teaching moments and your kids will always remember how you taught them character.