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.