Raising a Moral Child

In the  article titled “Raising a Moral Child”,  it was great to be able to see the links imbedded into the article that lead to the research it talks about to show that it isn’t something made up and they have resources to back up what they say. After reading that article I can say that I fully agree with what the article says with parents caring more about good attitude over achievement and how it is good to teach children to be caring it is almost never easy to show them at a young age as well as how some children are getting to be too good-natured. But what really caught my attention was when it talked about how at a young age, we should praise our children when they do good things but how you do that has a risk to it. When a child does something good and you praise action and offer a reward you run the risk of the child only doing good things when they know they will get something good in return or won’t do it if there is nothing in it for them. That is different if you praise the child and not the action. An example of this in the article is when they say how a couple are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing to do” compared to, “You’re a helpful person” see the difference.

                Another research that caught my attention was when they explained an experiment done where they basically studied the differences between children who were told to be generous to other kids and give them tokens they have received while the person who told them to be generous was being selfish and children who were told to be generous to other kids and give them tokens while the person who told then to be generous was generous as well. Not surprisingly, the children who saw the adult be generous with his token, ended up giving more than those children who saw the adult be selfish. This experiment really shows how kids learn better through action more than words.