Raising an Ethical Child

Forgive my sometimes tongue-in-cheek tone in this post.  It's about parenting advice based on the latest research.  I relate this information mostly because I find it interesting and helpful for me to reflect on  my parenting in general, not because I'm interested in espousing a particular philosophy.  With those caveats in place, let's check out a couple of new-ish lines of thought.

In the '80s, people were all concerned about raising children with high self esteem by praising them for being smart.  The idea was that if kids had high enough self-esteem and thought they were smart enough, they would think they could do anything!  Unfortunately, since then, ample research has shown that that method was most effective at raising a lot of kids who were afraid to fail and therefore afraid to take risks and potentially excel.  They were basically afraid of not appearing to be smart.

Now what do we do?  Parents who have looked this up have probably read that it's probably a better idea to praise kids for trying hard because they tend to perform better and they're not too afraid to try.  If you're interested, check out this video on increasing grit...

...and this video of being praised for their praised for effort rather than intelligence...

Alright, now onto the next one.  You've figured out how to raise a hard worker who's not afraid for fail, but what about raising a kid who has good morals?  Well.  That's a whole other kettle of fish that I hadn't really ever considered.  I'm not a religious person, and I recoil at the word "moral."  I'm more comfort with the word ethical -- it seems less entrenched in a cultural or religious value system.  But now we're just talking semantics (and let's face it, I love semantics).

This recent article from the New York Times suggests that if you want to raise a moral (or ethical) child, it's best to praise them for being a good person when they do good things.  Doing so helps them to identify as a good person.

But what about when they do bad things?  Current research cautions against telling kids that they are being bad because -- two sides of the same coin here -- then they'll identify as a bad person.  And we don't want that.  We want them to identify as good people because then they're more likely to do things like share and smile.  Therefore, researchers advise chiding them for the bad actions the children did rather than focus on what kind of person their actions indicate they might be.

For now, I find all this research compelling, and I basically try to follow the advice, although not to a T.  Because after all, I don't want my kid to be a total pushover workaholic.  More importantly, who knows what the unintended consequences of this advice will be?  Let's experiment and find out.  It's never stopped us before!