Evaluative Behavior

Communicating your own value system to your child is a part of good parenting. Pointing out good and bad behavior creates within your child a sense of right and wrong, or what I think of as the Internal Morality Measuring Stick. Teaching children what is good and bad, right and wrong, gives rise to their own ability to evaluate their behavior, and ability that otherwise may develop poorly, if at all. The Internal Morality Measuring Stick is a determinant of how our children will behave not only as children, but as adults. It is vital that parents understand that their actions will determine the way their children act toward their future children.

Evaluating behavior begins at birth and remains an ongoing process in parenting. Parents must evaluate their behavior and the behavior of others for them because they are otherwise unable to develop their own Morality Stick. For example, when watching a television show with a child, it is important to point out behavior that is "bad" or "mean" or "wrong." For this reason, parents should always watch television with their children because otherwise children have no way to evaluate what they are seeing. (Choosing the content to which their children will be exposed is equally important; select educational programming rather than violent "action heroes.") In the same way, parents should evaluate the music their children are listening to, the sites they are going to on the Internet, and the games they are playing, and should do so in a manner that makes clear to the child whether these things are "bad" or "good," and why. Children will process what they have been told and then will begin to apply it to other things and people in their lives.

So, to recap this series - communication takes a conscious and committed effort by parents, but is worth every moment.

As I discuss in For All Things A Season, "Your children need you to communicate to them about who they are, how they are doing, and what you think and feel they need to be doing. They need you to make eye contact with them because they really do care what you have to say. As the parent, you need to feel that what you have to say is important, and then your children will feel it too. Evaluate their world for them. They will feel safer with you looking out for them."

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Have a blessed day.