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Raising Generous Children
April 29, 2014
A knife will not cut it's own handle.
-Persian Proverb
-Persian Proverb
In a fascinating New York Times article, "How to Raise a Moral Child," Adam Grant makes some recommendations about how to encourage generous behavior and discourage misbehavior, based on research, that sometimes fly in the face of common early childhood education perspectives:
"To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake....."
"...for [promoting] moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them 'to help,' it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them 'to be a helper.' Cheating was cut in half when instead of, 'Please don't cheat,' participants were told, 'Please don't be a cheater.'
"When children cause harm, they typically feel one of two emotions: shame or guilt....Shame is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the feeling that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about the core self, which is devastating. Shame makes children feel small and worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or escaping the situation altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative judgment about an action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When children feel guilty, they tend to experience remorse and regret, empathize with the person they have harmed, and aim to make it right."
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsGrigsby Learning Village
Stockton, CA, United States
Kathy Gilbert I was thinking the exact same thing. The article tends to contradict itself because in the beginning it has the statement you quoted and in the end it seems to say the opposite. In other words judge the action not the child.
United States
"To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them 'to help,' it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them 'to be a helper.' Cheating was cut in half when instead of, 'Please don't cheat,' participants were told, 'Please don't be a cheater.'"
In the above statement from the article, isn't this labeling the child instead of separating the behavior from the identity of the child? We tell children they are not bad, however the behavior was. By saying, "don't be a cheater", aren't we telling the child that if they cheat then it is who they are instead of a bad behavior?
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