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INSPIRATION
PARENT INSPIRATION
Teaching Christian Values
Teach the Values
T
eaching reinforces your living model of God’s values. Your teaching needs to be
forceful, positive, passionate, and frequent. Strong family leadership provides a
model your children cannot ignore. It’s crucial for teaching values. Make your propaganda early! Look ahead at what your child will confront. Teach with an eye on the future
and on today.
1. Focus. Have a plan for teaching values. Focus on one value at a time - maybe one a
month, or one your kids are confronting right now, or one they will confront soon.
2. Teach. The most successful teaching strategies combine thinking and feeling.
• Stories are powerful. All ages like them. They have emotional pull and a nudge to
thinking. Stories remembered impress the heart in moments of decision. Children can
identify with characters in the story. Dialog about what each person in the story thinks
or feels. Don’t moralize. Let the story speak for itself. The best stories are your stories what you experienced growing up.
• Everyday situations make ideal teaching situations. Grab the moment and run with it.
•Questions usually teach better than scolding or lectures. Children need to learn to
think about what they’re doing. Follow these guidelines for questions to be effective:
Ask only one question. Wait for a response. Keep your voice normal, or lower than
normal. Be respectful of the child. Do not give up. Questions take more time, but
they build moral understanding and reasoning. Your children need this to internalize
values. Begin by asking, What are you doing? Wait for an answer - it may take awhile.
Followup questions depend on the situation.
• Act-it-out or role playing is very effective for teaching values, especially for teaching
children how to deal with peer pressure. Act out different peer pressure situations what to say and how to act - alternating roles.
• Drawing is an easy way for children to express their feelings. Never tell the child what
to draw. Don’t hover. Don’t comment about the drawing. Just say, “Tell me about your
drawing.” Then listen. Express how you think your child felt. Afterwards she may want
to talk more.
• Key guiding phrases frequently reinforce your teaching. Post them around the house.
Selected Bible verses convey God’s wisdom: “Even a child is known by his actions”
(Prov 20:11). Remember what your mother used to say? “Birds of a feather flock
together.” Use the ones you learned from your parents or your own favorites.
• Posters and pictures are valuable teaching aids. Christian bookstores have posters that
teach values. Change frequently. Make some on the computer or draw or paint. Post
on your family bulletin board.
3. Think. Even young children can be guided to think about their actions. Thinking about
an action raises it to a conscious level and helps kids make the right decisions.
4. Adapt. Consider your child’s age, understanding, and learning style. During early childhood children are learning what is right and what is wrong.Make your teaching very
specific with clear consequences for doing wrong. In late childhood (ages 6-12) focus on
teaching values in a serious way. During adolescence help your teen rework the values
he learned earlier so he can truly claim them as his own.
REFLECT
These commandments that I give
you today are to be upon your
hearts. Impress them on your
children. Talk about them when
you sit at home and when you
walk along the road, when you
lie down and when you get up.
Deuteronomy 6:6-7 NIV
The aim of education is the
knowledge, not of facts, but of
values. William Burroughs
If we are to go forward, we must
go back and rediscover those
precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations
and that all reality has spiritual
control. Martin L King, Jr
It is easier to build strong children
than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
LEARN MORE
• God’s wisdom: Proverbs 31:30;
Proverbs 22:29a; Proverbs
21:23; Proverbs 20:3b; Proverbs 16:3; Proverbs 15:1; Proverbs 14:30b; Proverbs 14:12.
• 10 Christian Values Every Kid
Should Know: A How-to Guide
for Families by Donna Habenicht. See chapter 4 for specific
how-to-do-it ways to teach values.
• The Moral Intelligence of Children by Robert Coles
• Values Education Practical Ideas and Websites k12.
hi.us/~mkunimit/page13.htm
• Recommended Values &
Character Education Resources circle.adventist.org/
browse/?browse_node=41
Get started this week by trying one of the teaching ideas.
circle.adventist.org
Donna Habenicht © 2012 | Parenting Teens | circle.adventist.org/4parents
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