Some people may think it's old-fashioned to talk about character development. But
I got to tell you, good character never goes out of style.
This video will talk about how we help our children develop good character in
these times when some people don't even think that there is a thing called
character at all. Ah, the memories of my childhood --working in the yard every
Saturday morning for hours. In fact, I'm such a good mom I have my children work
in the yard with me regularly for hours too. Why would I do this when I didn't
enjoy it very much as a child? I remember asking my father when I was young. "Dad,
why do we have to do all of this yard work all the time?" And he looked at me as
proud as he could be and said, "Because it builds good character." I wasn't really
sure I wanted that thing called character. It didn't sound very good. It
certainly didn't feel very good all of the time. Especially when I'd rather be
playing with friends. In this video, I would like to explain to you some of the
history of character where it came from and why it matters. And then I'm going to
talk about the five key components for helping build good character in children.
Back in the time of the ancient, Anglo-Saxons in Britain, there was a
practice where if someone was a thief or a murderer or a blasphemer or something
like that, they would actually brand letters into their hands, foreheads,
shoulders, faces so that everyone could know what bad thing they had done. The
tool used to burn this mark into the criminal or the offender was given a
name. The name for the tool was CHARACTER. Over time, the mark made by the tool also
carried the same name. So, if you saw a person that had something burned into
their hand, you would know their character. Meaning, their history of all
of the bad things that they done with the law or that the society
had not approved of. Well, it didn't take too many hundreds of years until this
sum total of a person's bad qualities or bad characters were switched out by
gentlemen and ladies. And the word character became known for the sum total
of a person's good qualities. In fact, the people started saying "That is a man of
character." And that's what everyone wanted to be, was a person of character.
For many many years, the mark of a person's character was
actually the most important thing about the person. So, what does it look like?
What is the mark if a person has good character? There's something about that
person that shows honesty. Feels like integrity, feels like strength, calmness,
peace, understanding, wisdom, duty, compassion, punctuality even. There are a
lot of different qualities that would come together to make a person of
character. In order to turn yourself into that person you had to practice a
refining process called self-government. Which means that you would examine
yourself piece by piece and determine which piece needed improvement in order
to take you into the direction that you are going called character. Here are 5
key components to developing character in children. Number 1, you need to have
consistent teaching that involves self analysis. What this means is you've got
to correct the problems every time. Not just when you're in the mood, when you
feel like you've got the energy for it. It has to be all the time. And the
correction needs to happen the same way every time too. So, that the child gets
the opportunity to learn cause-and-effect properly. If they hear
the same types of correction for the same behavior every
you'll time, then they're able to analyze themselves better. They can see "I did
this thing and this is what happened. This is the correction that occurred or
the teaching that occurred." I think of correcting as teaching. Not as punishment
and making a person try to feel bad about what they did. But just teaching
them cause-and-effect so they can get themselves going back in
that right direction. So, that is the first key component that is vital for
helping a child determine how to develop their own character. Because we can't
develop their characters for them. The second component is honest communication.
This means no manipulation. There's a difference between those things. I hope
you can see that clearly. But when a parent chooses to be emotional, that
actually is manipulative. The child feels that manipulation and they won't respond
well. And if you start manipulating them to make a change in themselves then they
will start manipulating you as well in order to try to get you to change to
make life more easy for them too. There are multiple different ways to have honest
communication with your children especially when you're correcting them.
Honest communication does not, I repeat, NOT sound like, "You make me so mad!" You
may be feeling that inside but that is an emotional response to somebody else's
action. So, that is a manipulation. Honest communication would sound more like a
description such as, "Just now, I gave you an instruction and you didn't look at me
or keep a calm face voice and body. You didn't say, okay or do the task
immediately. What you should have done was looked at the person. Kept a calm
face voice and body said okay or ask to disagree appropriately. Do the task
immediately and then check back." And then you would go on with the corrective
teaching from there. We have other videos on this channel that talk about how to
do great corrections for your children. So, check those things out.
The third component for helping children develop good character is to create a
culture in your home of service, sacrifice and duty. Those 3 things
are all related to each other. Service, that means that the family
members willingly serve each other. The family would not talk about how one
person did more than another person or how somebody else had to do something
that was harder than somebody else and how it's not fair. The family just serves
each other. Whatever needs to be done, we work on it. We don't compare, we don't try
to act like we're in competition with family members. And the parents don't do
it either. The parents show sacrifice and duty to their children which means even
when you're tired, even when you're sick, even when it's been a hard day at the
office, you still do the teaching. You still look at them in the eyes with love.
You still care about taking the time to do the correction. Because they need that
for their own development. When they see you step up to the challenge and be the
person you're supposed to be in the family, they'll learn by example that
that's what it means to be a great man or a great woman. And you'll soon become
their hero. People who have great character all have heroes. They have
people they try to emulate. It used to be parents were always the heroes. Now, we
have these icons in the media that captured the attention of the young
people. Those people aren't heroes. In fact, they display the lowest possible
standards and glory in them. Know our children need to see what a real hero
looks like. And it's up to us and grandparents and the people around them
that really care to show them what a hero is by having good character
ourselves. The fourth key component for helping children develop good character
is goal-setting and follow-through. When a person sets goals and
these themselves follow through with those goals or at the very least be held
accountable, then that person is more likely to take ownership over their own
behavior and their own thoughts. They will plan for their future success. So,
parents need to have specific times where they set goals with their children
for how they want to develop. You know, I think sometimes the children just go
along passively with their own development. Because the parents are just
trying to make something happen to the child without involving the child really
in the process. That is also called manipulation. They need to know what
you're doing, how you're correcting, how you're communicating. Why? How they can
use this in their future in order to become mature? And having real character
is a state of maturity. Number 5, work. One of my heroes literary heroes is a
man called Samuel Smiles. He wrote a book back in the 1800s called character. I
highly recommend reading it. In this book, he talked about work. And he said work is
the antidote for a sick character. When I read that phrase, I realized that is
totally true. I have seen it time and time again as troubled youth have come
in my home and out of my home when we did the BBC program back in 2009 and
those two troubled children came to our home. Those children did not know how to
work. And because of that they were very selfish. Selfishness is the opposite of
having good character. Because remember, good character involves duty. Duty is the
opposite of selfish. Duty takes other people into consideration. Selfishness
means you only think about yourself. When a person works, they oftentimes, in fact,
the majority of the time, especially in a family are serving their family members.
They're reaching outside of themselves and they're doing something that helps
the family. They also have to control themselves
through the whole process of getting the job done. Whatever it happens to be.
Maybe it's an easy job. Maybe it's a hard job. But they have to decide ahead of
time, "I'm going to get this job done. This is how I'm going to do this job." And then
they have to follow through with it. When they follow through with the job, they
actually feel a sense of accomplishment. This sense of accomplishment builds
confidence and improves their character because it gives them a desire to do
more and more good things. More and more hard things to conquer themselves again
and again. And the mark of a person with character is a person who has conquered
themselves time and time again. My dad was right about character and about work.
Thanks, dad! I really hope that I've been able to
instill that same work ethic in my children. In fact, as I'm seeing them grow
and move on into adulthood, I am seeing them work hard and not complain. I'm
hearing things from them like, "Mom, I'm so glad you taught me how to cook. Mom, I'm
so glad you taught me how to make something out of nothing.
Mom, I'm so glad you taught me how to work. My roommates are slobs." And such and
so forth. A big part of character development is turning the will or the
heart of the child toward the hero, toward the leader that needs to give
them the principles that they need for their own personal maturity and
development. Which means strong will children could struggle a little bit
with character development. They'll also excel at it. As soon as they
find out that when they live according to character, they live with truth. That's
what strong-willed children like. There's another video I recommend you watching
called how to get a Strong-Willed Child to listen. This will give you more help
for character development with your child.