Moral Development In Children

Moral development happens when a child needs to evaluate different beliefs and values and choose which set of rules they'll follow. Sometimes parents try to present their child with the correct choice rather than having the child learn the consequences of their choices. This can impact the child's ability to make decisions when the parent isn't around to provide guidance. Parents who let their children make their own choices  but remove negative  consequences rather than following through with punishment manifest how children are presented with opportunities to resolve moral conflicts and learn appropriate moral responses through experiences.

Moral development helps children develop their own attitudes and values. Parents who allow their children to make their own choices but remove negative  consequences  prevent their children from moral development because they don't follow through with any consequence. It hinders moral development because the child is being told what's right and wrong. For example, if a child chooses  to lie about doing their homework and there isn't a consequence for not doing their homework children learn there is nothing right or wrong about lying about not doing their homework and no moral lesson is taught or learned. The opportunity for the child to learn what an appropriate moral response to lying is not presented and the moral dilemma of whether lying is right or wrong isn't resolved.

Moral development is an important  concept because it applies to the conditions of relationships with peers. Pro-social development progresses through the ongoing productive interactions between children and their parent's, sibling's, friends and culture. The give and take feature of social influence motivates the complex process shaping social and emotional development in childhood. Parents can use inductive reasoning to inform children of norms and principles to explain the effects of children's actions. This will help a child when they get stuck in one way of looking at a situation and help them see other possibilities. Explaining consequences of a person's actions improves children's reasoning skills. When children misbehave parents should explain why their actions were hurtful to others so children can understand consequences of their behavior.

Values are qualities or beliefs that are viewed as desirable or important. Infants and toddlers learn values through interactions they have with family, caregivers and other children they're exposed to. The development of values happens in a social setting. Children interact with other people in their environment and as they do so attitudes are gained through the socialization process. Attitudes can be learned through instruction or modeling. For example, an attitude can be learned through instruction when a parent tells a child to behave a certain way, "Go tell your sibling to hurry before I leave them here." Attitudes can be modeled by an older sibling talking back to the parents and then the younger siblings doing the action as well.

A child's value and belief system steadily develops as children resolve discrepancies in competing beliefs and values. Values are influenced by various factors and often reflect the values of the parents, teachers, religion, culture and friends of children. Age, experiences and cognitive development impact the values children come to hold. Attitudes and values are different for each family. As parents instill in their children the attitudes and values they have their children will  form the same attitudes and values or shape their own using their parents as a foundation. Teaching attitudes and values can be tricky but it's important for parents to remember, understand and respect that children will develop their own attitudes and values as they grow.

Four Factors That Influence Attitudes and Beliefs of School Aged Children

Factor that influence the development of attitudes and beliefs in school aged children are: family, peers, mass media and school community. Family members are the people who children spend the most time with and have the most influence on attitudes of children. Children's attitudes toward academic achievement, physical activity, and risk taking are all influenced by parents. For example, if a parent doesn't care about what kind of grades a child receives as long as they're passing, the child may learn not to value education. If a parent lets a child eat whatever they want with no thought tow whether or not it's healthy, a child won't be careful about what kinds of food they eat.

Peers and a child's circle of friends have a large influence on children's attitudes and beliefs. Children spend a majority of their day with peers and friends and therefore attitudes and beliefs of this group impact children's attitudes and beliefs. Children have a tendency to compare their behavior with behavior of friends. They understand the difference between classmates within the in-group and out-group. Peer influences increase as children get older which is why it's important for children to be part of a group that accepts them as equals.

Mass media affects children's attitudes and beliefs and they are flooded with messages  daily which cause a child to change their attitudes and beliefs to reflect the message they see and hear on TV, radio and print. Video games can effect attitudes and beliefs and what messages these send depend on the types of video games children play.

School community can develop attitudes and beliefs because of gender roles and stereotyping that can happen in schools. For example, if  a school makes it a requirement for girls to take a class on cooking and sewing and not boys the school has taught these skills are only for girls. If a school requires boys to take a class on Technology but doesn't require girls to, the school has taught these skills are only for boys.

It is important to be careful of the messages we send children through the attitudes we teach and show by example and the beliefs we share with them. We also remember we need to remember beliefs and attitudes come from other places other than home to discuss why a behavior may not be good or a belief is different from ours while also teaching our children those beliefs are just different from ones we may have but that doesn't make them wrong.






















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Helping Children Learn How to Recognize Difference Between Opinion and Fact

Logic is the study of reasoning and examines the structure and content of arguments. Logic helps describe various types of arguments and evaluates why good arguments work and bad ones fail. Some people use dogmatism to state their position. Dogmatism is of course when a person claims their opinion to be true. There is a difference between opinion and fact. An opinion is a belief based on what someone thinks to be true or likely. A fact is something that has actually happened or that is really true and reality.

A fallacy is a mistake in reasoning. There are around 23 fallacies a person can use when making an argument. The begging the question fallacy is when a person commits a mistake in reasoning by assuming what one seeks to prove. For example, everyone wants the latest iphone when it comes out because it is the hottest phone of the season. This is a fallacy and an example of begging the question because there are some people who don't like or use iphones. Another type of fallacy is the argument of scare tactics. This fallacy is used to play on a person's fears in order to get the person to do something or believe something to be true. For example, if a dad tells a guy to leave his daughter alone and to let her believe he doesn't care about her or he as the dad will do something to either the guy or his daughter-whatever the threat may be to get the guy to leave his daughter alone- the dad has played on the fears of the guy in order to get him to leave his daughter alone and the guy has believed the dad will do whatever the dad has threatened to do.

There are other forms of fallacies such as scapegoating, the red herring and many more. Regardless of what fallacy a person uses the fallacy uses informal logic which is why these are never true. However, because children's brains are still developing, they can be influenced to believe the generalizations that fallacies use when people use them to prove their claim. When fallacies are used, the claims are usually false and cannot be proven. Children need guidance from adults to consider whether a claim is true or whether they can actually do legally what they claim they will do.