In this video I'm going to be talking about how to develop character in children.
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I am the creator of teaching self-government.
Teaching self-government is a type of parenting where parents and children learn self-government.
This requires good character development so we're going to be doing some background help on what we
can do to help our children develop good character in this video today. I'm going to be sharing with
you some examples of good character development as well as give you a long list of things that
you can keep in mind as you're helping your child become a person of character. If you look up the
definition of the word "character" in Webster's 1828 dictionary which is one of my favorite books, yes
one of my favorite books is the dictionary. It's kind of crazy to say but it's true. I love
that book. You learn so much about the origin of words and where they've been. I've noticed we've
semantically changed so many things in our society today. In fact it used to be that a person either
had character or they didn't. So you were either a man of character or you had no character. It wasn't
good character, bad character so an interesting thing to keep in mind there. Character was the
hallmark of a good person. A gentleman always was supposed to be having character and a lady, so your
gentry always was was supposed to be setting the example of good character. What types of things
amount to good character? Well when a person is honest, when a person is giving, when a person is
generous and kind, these are all things that would be attributes of a person that has good character.
So let's talk about this list which kind of can be a long list of things that you need to focus
on for teaching your child to have good character, to be a person of character as opposed to someone
who doesn't have someone or who has a character that is not developed yet. Learning character is
environmental. It is something that a person is exposed to when they're very young so that means
that one of the most important things that you can do to help your child develop good character is to
be a person of character yourself, which means that you understand the attributes of a person of good
character and you live them so that they have an example to follow. In fact example is always
the best teacher so be sure to work on yourself as much as you're going to be working on helping your
child learn to have character too. One important part of having character is having a sense of duty.
So when a person has character, then they recognize that they need to serve other people. Their duty
bound. In fact truth holds them accountable. When a person has character, they say this truth serves me.
Maybe it's freedom, something related to their country or something or maybe it's a religious
truth, something that they know is absolutely true. They feel like it serves them so then they have
a moral obligation to serve that truth as well. So you'll see people turning around and serving their
countries, serving their religions and their faith, serving their communities, serving their family.
So when something serves them, they feel duty-bound to turn around and do good back to that group.
Often times people who serve in military service have a shred at least of character. There's some
duty that they feel to a greater cause. Usually this is one of the reasons that they will enroll
or enlist in military service. With duty comes sacrifice so just like the person who is signing
up for the military and they are deciding that they are going to give their time to serve the
truth, again, to serve that freedom that has served them or whatever it is, this is all sacrifice. They
are deciding to sacrifice their time, their energy, sometimes even their life for truth and for a
good cause. In fact that's a really important part of a person who has character is they do
oftentimes have a focus on the truth. They have an allegiance to truth and an allegiance to goodness
and they will do anything necessary in order to uphold that truth. They put themselves as second,
they put truth and other people around them higher up than they put themselves. We all
have people that we look up to. Before we get to these next components of how to help your
child develop character, I would like to know who you look up to, a person that has great character.
Who do you want to be like? What character traits from that person inspire you the most? Put it in
the comments below. I would love to see who your inspiration is. So let's talk for a moment about
integrity because like I mentioned, integrity or honesty is the hallmark of a person of character.
When a person has integrity, this doesn't just mean that they're going to be telling the truth and not
taking things that don't belong to them but they will also be the type of people that put in an
honest day's work. They are the type of people that when they tell you I will have this done
by a certain time, they really will get it done by the certain time. They will put everything
into honoring their word. They don't mislead people, they don't make excuses for their own behavior.
They examine themselves with an honest lens. This integrity is right there at the heart of that
person who has character. This means that they take full responsibility for their own actions
and their own thoughts. I have a word for this. The word for the person who takes full responsibility
for themselves and becomes the best version of themselves deliberately, on purpose is a
self-governing person. So a person with character recognizes that they carry the full weight, the
burden of becoming the best version of themselves. It's not anybody else's fault. They take that
responsibility seriously and they work diligently and deliberately to try to overcome their
weaknesses. They don't have a problem identifying them because a person who truly has integrity
is never going to be afraid to take an honest look at themselves as well as the situation around them.
A person of character knows how to work. This goes back to the integrity, back to the duty, back to the
sacrifice but you know a person has character when they put in good work. When they say I'll
help you and wow, they really do or I need help but they work alongside you. They're not afraid of work.
They know they can do hard things and accomplish the task at hand. So if you want to teach your
child to have good character, to have a sense of duty and sacrifice and integrity,
work is going to be a huge part of it. In fact did you know that most apathetic societies, the
ones that become so selfish that they fall and they don't thrive or succeed are the ones where
the people embrace laziness and comfort instead of work. I want you to think about our society.
How often do people talk about what makes them comfortable or not comfortable? So
many people think to make another person feel uncomfortable or to make yourself uncomfortable
is one of the worst things that you could do. This is not a good sign for character development
because working is sometimes uncomfortable. By its very nature it can be hard and test
the body and the mind in certain ways but work also is one of the foundational building blocks
for a person of confidence, for a person who is determined to be the best, most honest
version of themselves. So teach your children to work. Work with them, give them other things they
can do on their own as well but don't be afraid of work. It does good things for everybody. If you want
to train someone to have a strong character, then they need to see around them clearly. They need
to see what it looks like when a person doesn't have character and what it looks like when they
do so you need to discuss what's going on in the world, discuss current events, discuss great books,
discuss great ideas, read inspiring people and talk about those things together with your children so
that they can see what is a good character quality and what is not. So, this is one of the things that
we can do to help them see integrity and see what it looks like when a person is being dishonest or
selfish, which is the opposite of having integrity. What does duty really look like? We can see that
in a story or in somebody's personal experience and we can discuss, so that's going to be really
important as you help them develop some of these characteristics of character. Communication
is important. A person who has good character, they usually know how to communicate even when
they don't agree with somebody else. So they learn vital skills like how to disagree appropriately.
They oftentimes focus on having diplomacy, they focus on understanding other people
and being understood in a way that is calm and not aggressive. So calmness is a huge tone element for
a person with character. In fact it's usually one of their hallmarks. When you meet a person who has
good character, you usually see this calmness or you feel it radiate from them. Nothing's going to
ruffle them, they can talk to you about anything, they truly do want to understand, they have skills
and rules for themselves for engagement with other people so they keep themselves regulated
even in moments when there might be people who are volatile and who have a problem with them. This
really gets into my wheelhouse. I could go on for hours about the skills that are needed to develop
this type of calmness. I want you to know that at the end of this video, I am going to be giving you
a free gift. This free gift will help you develop calmness so that I don't have to go into all of
it right now so stay tuned for that. Specifically developing character in children requires some
forethought. You need to plan ahead and decide what attributes do I need to help my children
develop so I need to teach them to serve, I need to teach them to work, I need to teach them to follow
instructions, to accept disappointments, to be honest in their dealings with other people.
How am I going to prepare them to do all of these things? Well I've got a recipe for you. What
you need to do is first, educate yourself on what you need for character and there is a great book,
it's an old one but I highly recommend it it's called Character and it's by Samuel Smiles. It was
written back in the 1800's. You can find much more information about character there so first educate
yourself. The second thing that you want to do is you want to prepare your child. Teach them about
character, discuss deeply with them about what character is and teach them stories of character.
After that you are going to prepare them for certain situations. So you're going to tell them to
use certain skills that you might have taught them, skills like how to accept a "no" answer when things
don't go our way or how to communicate honestly with other people. These are all self-government
skills, skills that you can learn more about on my website teachingselfgovernment.com.
So once you teach them those skills, then you're going to prepare them right in the
moment for when to use those skills. So you'll say to them hey, we've got a situation coming up
where we get to serve other people or where we're going to be following lots of instructions
because we are going to an event that's being run by somebody else. So how are we going to follow
those instructions? Then they'll tell you the five steps to following an instruction and you'll tell
them great, that's wonderful and then if it goes well, I'll praise you and this is what will happen.
If it doesn't go well and you're not following instructions, this is how I will correct you. So
for a person to develop character, it has to happen in a cause and effect environment. So they focus
on what's true and they want it but if they don't see when they're making mistake, they won't be able
to keep their character intact. So you do have to prepare them and then correct and praise them by
giving them feedback after a situation occurs. Your children can be people of character and so can
you and our world desperately needs that. I am so glad that you're engaged in this, that you've even
asked this question today. I promised you that at the end of this video I would have a free gift
for you. My free gift is a course that I would like to share for you completely free. It's called the
calm parenting toolkit. This calm parenting toolkit is linked to in the description below this video.
It's one of the top links. It should say something about calm toolkit or something like that. Click
that and it will take you to a free version of the calm parenting toolkit so that you can enjoy
it and work more on your character and theirs. Click on that link now and I'll see you there.