What Builds Your Child’s Character

Parents’ Role in Developing a Child’s Character

The way parents talk to their children influences how they will use language and develop their own moral code when they play with their friends. Harvard education professor Catherine Snow believes that the parents’ role of promoting empathy begins in infancy as parents help their children learn by linking what is going on in real life with dialogue or pretend stories.By talking with the child about degrees of badness or goodness in stories, parents can explore the reasons, rules, and consequences of particular situations. Snow’s research has shown that at age two and a half, children talk about “bad things” in terms of limiting actions (“I don’t do that. That’s bad.”), but the emphasis shifts to “good” concepts by age three and a half (“I’m being a good boy.”). By the time they are between the ages of four and a half to six, children are switching their language to include “should” and “shouldn’t” (“You shouldn’t grab my toys because I won’t like you. That’s not a good idea.”).

Stories shared between parents and children help children under- stand how morality is constructed. Parents can use these stories and create moral lessons by talking about different characters who exhibit the right or wrong behavior. The moral importance of the story is defined by the consequences that happen to someone in the story or to themselves or another child during a play interaction in real life. For example, many popular children’s books are based on themes of morality. One example is Eric Carle’s Do You Want to Be My Friend? In the book, a lonely mouse is looking for a friend and meets several unfriendly animals such as the alligator and the lion that are not “nice.” The mouse finds the “just right friend” who is nice. Characters from Winnie the Pooh are also helpful. When Pooh’s friends all come to help Pooh when he is stuck in the rabbit hole, they are exhibiting “good moral behavior” and taking care of each other.

Children also learn from their own actions and the actions of their peers. Once a three year old said to Ann, “My friend took my blue sled. I shouldn’t grab it away from him because I would be bad. Right?”

Socialized children have a strong moral understanding and can follow the rules of the culture, relate to classmates, and become respected and connected in the community. Most parents agree that a child who adheres to a strong understanding of moral values is easier to be with, talk with, and include in social interactions.

The Influence of Culture

The cultural aspect of morality is defined by how we interact with each other and what activities are valued within the home, where children learn what aspects of life the family values. For example, in some families and their extended cultures, it is more important for a child to learn to draw and express ideas and emotions through the visual rather than through oral language. In other families, children are expected to use language to express their thoughts as well as their feelings and emotions. Other cultures combine oral language with a strong use of subtle language cues.

Ann was once working with a young preschool girl from Japan. Yumi’s teachers thought that she was “pensive” and a sensitive child who rarely used language to express her emotions. Yumi didn’t relate to or interact with the other children, and when she did, she would talk in a soft whisper. She loved to be alone, drawing circles over and over again on large pieces of paper. Her teachers were also concerned about this repetitive behavior and thought that she might be a candidate for an evaluation for autism.

Ann was called in as the consultant. When Ann arrived during recess, she noticed Yumi sitting near the fence, pointing to the ground. She looked up and smiled, and said, “It’s the crocus. See? It’s almost spring.”

Yumi continued to explain the concept of the seasons in detail, a rather sophisticated and abstract concept for a three year old. Then Yumi led Ann into her classroom and showed off her drawings of several large and small circles on a large white piece of paper. When Ann asked about the circles, Yumi giggled and pointed to the drawing and said, “This is the universe, and these are the stars and the planets. See this is Saturn with rings, and this one is Jupiter.”

After talking with her teachers, Ann found out that Yumi’s parents were scientists, who often created scientific drawings with Yumi at home. Yumi was simply repeating an exercise that she loved to do with her family at home. Yumi didn’t have autism or any disability. What’s more, her language improved once her teachers realized that she was just recreating her family culture at school, concentrating on activities that her family valued. Yumi needed to relate to her home culture throughout the day in order to feel safe and accepted in school.

The Importance of Empathy

A second aspect to morality is mastering the concept of empathy: understanding and having compassion for the needs and feelings of others. In a New York Times article, Jane Brody writes that while the “capacity for empathy seems to be innate, and is evident in other species,” the environment in which children are raised can “make a big difference in whether empathy is fostered or suppressed.”2 In order for children to feel empathy, Stanley Greenspan identifies that children need to recognize their own feelings and express them by labeling them and experiencing their emotions; then they will recognize the feelings of others.

Cultural differences and parental choices can affect the way children perceive the need to be empathic. However, children cannot have a strong moral character without this skill. When they can truly understand and feel what another child, or even a parent, is thinking or feeling about a specific situation, they’re able to understand the con- sequences of their own actions.

Children must learn that their behavior has a ripple effect: if it causes others to feel hurt, rejected, or defiant, the child needs to learn that this behavior has negative consequences. Children should also be able to recognize when they make others feel good about them- selves. By the age of five, most children understand that a moral act is clarified by its consequences or by the cultural values of their family or community.

Empathy is also more fully understood when we have the language to convey our own feelings. Some cultures, including our own, suggest that parents or teachers who can imitate a child’s actions can provide the best examples for children to discover another person’s feelings. Parents can begin to interpret their child’s emotions before the age of two, but they will see the greatest impact at ages three and four. What’s more, children who hear their parents talk about feelings are more likely to talk about their own feelings. Research has revealed strong correlations between the amount of maternal talk about feelings to eighteen month olds and the same children’s talk about their own inner states at twenty-four months.

Being empathic does not necessarily mean that you are comfort- able talking about other’s emotions. For example, some cultures value the ability to discuss the feelings of others, while others don’t feel that it is appropriate. The cultures that don’t value conversations about feelings are no less empathic or less moral; they simply do not engage in that kind of conversation. For example, a famous study by New York University professor of anthropology Bambi B. Schieffelin and Elinor Ochs, professor of linguistics at University of Southern California, explains that language socialization of children draws not only on the language interaction from a culture, but the psychological and anthropological background of a family or a society. Schieffelin focused on children’s language development within different cultures and found that in some societies, children acquire “different sets of understandings about communication with their caretakers.”5 For example, they documented that a child growing up in the Kaluli tribe, a culture found in the tropical rainforests of the Southern Highlands of Papua, New Guinea, was not expected to relate to others on an emotional level unless that person specifically tells him what he is thinking. In this culture, no individual holds power, and everyone has equal access to resources. Kaluli children are taught that the giving and receiving of food is a way to measure affection, and the sharing of food is the focus of social relations. These children can recognize negative behavior and understand how a negative action relates to negative consequences: bad behavior is punished by taking away food, which is then identified with loneliness.

Lying and Morality

Understanding the purpose of lying is one of the best ways that parents can determine if children understand morality and have developed a moral character. A lie can be a conscious attempt at manipulating others to get what you want. Sometimes lying is a form of get- ting attention or teasing so that the parent will see the child’s sense of humor. Or a lie can be an unconscious mistake that happens within communication.

Some children who lie to manipulate know that they are breaking a rule because they’re using language in a way that goes against the social rules or moral code of their community. Others don’t care what others think about them when they lie, and others purposely lie to get something in return.

Children who have stable friendships display a more advanced understanding of lying than those who have no lasting friends. And children who get caught telling lies or deceiving their peers on purpose, or who cannot recognize others’ feelings, are not popular or successful in our culture.

Preschoolers can usually recognize a lie that is coming from their friends or the adults who frequently surround them. Even three year olds can identify when something said was deceptive or morally wrong. In one study in Australia, children ages three to five were able to correctly identify a deliberately false statement as a lie and an inadvertently false statement as a mistake. In this age group, children exceeded the level of accuracy that would be expected by chance in both countries in this study: Italy and Australia. Children as young as three and four could recognize the distinction between a lie told knowingly and a mistaken false utterance by a speaker who intends to tell the truth.

Research suggests that recognizing lying behavior may be linked to possessing the skill known as “theory of mind” which allows a child to interpret the mental state of another. Theory of mind is directly linked to developing moral character. Simon Baron-Cohen, in his book Mindblindness, explains that an individual can read the behaviors of others in terms of volitional mental states (desire and goal) and can read eye direction and predict some intention by this eye gaze. The research found that children with autism have difficulty recognizing facial expressions, following a person’s eye gaze, and understanding what the person is thinking.7 Steven Pinker, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and author of The Language Instinct, says that we can’t really read other people’s minds, but we can make “good guesses” by what they show on their faces.

Successful communication is based on the ability to interpret others’ mental states and develop trust and cooperation during interactions. Children who do not understand facial expressions or read their subtle cues may misperceive what the person is trying to say and act inappropriately in response. Their response will give the other person a signal that the speaker is not empathic and doesn’t “get” what he wants him to understand. Some children need help interpreting facial and emotional reactions, as well as instructions on how to respond appropriately to moral transgressions.

Empathy and the Brain

There is considerable controversy regarding how emotional responses activate neural responses that relate to empathy. Researchers agree that when the brain responds to other people’s emotions, there are three cognitive skills needed to acquire empathy: the ability to share another person’s feelings, the ability to intuit what the person is feeling, and a socially beneficial intent to be compassionate to a person’s distress.

One prominent view is that emotional responses are automatic and processed in the amygdala. This region in the brain has long been known to play a role in emotion and has been identified as the area where the most primitive flight-or-fight response occurs during stress- ful situations. When the brain is processing emotional reactions of others, this area will show immediate activity on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The area of social neuroscience research related to empathy is called cognitive empathy and links moral behavior with perspective taking, a process by which an individual represents the internal mental state of another and acts appropriately or inappropriately.9 Similar to theory of mind, perspective taking involves associating a peer’s dis- tress with the action that caused the distress. This is what we call moral socialization.

Current brain research on theory of mind using fMRI has also shown that the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporoparietal junction, and the temporal poles are functioning when an individual is identifying the mental state of another.10 When an individual is thinking about another person’s ideas, his fMRI shows some changes to these areas. The evidence is not clear but it suggests that the brain is shifting when this perspective-taking event occurs.

Cognitive neuroscience research suggests that when an individual adopts perspective taking, the ability to understand the mental states of others, the neural circuits activated in the frontal cortex are the same ones used for executive function and inhibitory control. Executive functioning is also related to cognitive flexibility, which affects a person’s ability to make inferences regarding other’s mental states. The question they raise is whether perspective taking can induce empathic concern for those in distress and if this ability is motivated from a drive to actually help another person or to escape the situation. For example, when a child sees someone who is hurt, the child who is looking at the situation may have an immediate neurological response and feel empathy. But the child may also be fearful that he could be hurt by the same situation. The researchers found too that the ability to be empathic doesn’t mean the child will act on his feelings and help another person. Being able to see another’s perspective doesn’t necessarily mean that the child will act for the good of others.

The mastery of perspective taking may allow children to look beyond themselves and learn to base their behavior on another’s expectations. If preschoolers can learn to read social cues and understand the emotional state of others, they will be better able to socially connect and understand the moral rules of their culture. Our task is to help children develop a sense of moral understanding: to see how their actions affect their friends, be empathic to their friends, and recognize how they can be helpful to the larger group or even to the outside community.