How To Teach a Child Right From Wrong

The “how to” part here is the message. The right and wrong part is more about asking questions. Right and wrong are learned. It is not suggested we know right and wrong from birth. A child presents new challenges. The child as you were must be taught right and wrong. What you think about how to teach a child what is right and wrong, I promise you that you will question your own notions more thoroughly.

Is it right for a 10 year old boy to steal a loaf of bread to help feed his starving 4 siblings and sick mother? So many better choices but has the boy been taught right and wrong with an absent dad and a sickly mother and four younger ones to care for. We do not know about you, but this one is tough.

Does getting what you want have anything to do with right and wrong? Can doing it for ourselves make a difference compared to doing it for others, no matter what? Today a boy asks what to do about a bully. Today he is told to say he does not like it and report it. In my youth we were told to punch him in the mouth. So I guess right and wrong changes. Do the same rules apply when it is another child being bullied? Or how about a parent or teacher bullying.

Wow how to know right and wrong can get tricky. Talk to another parent and realize all of us face the same issues. If someone told you parenting would be easy, they must have been talking about feeding, clothing and staying up all night with a feverish one. Compared to deciding what is right or wrong those are easy.

Hey if you are thinking this is all just hypothetical intellectual mumbo jumbo, do yourself two favors; Note that you are intelligent and make bad calls here not with your child. Here we just yack about it, but it should help us to do better in the little one’s very real world, for decades to come. And remember please that it is your real world for decades to come.

And please by all means feel easy about making a mistake. The rule of thumb there is to never be afraid or too proud to make adjustments as you see fit. My judgement when cooking, doing laundry, and helping with homework simultaneously you partner calls on que with something disturbing. Sure you can count on your judgement at such times – Not, but an answer may be required immediately. So fix it later. For sure that helps teach right and wrong.

Now is a good time to address your own concepts of right and wrong. And we mean by that, you addressing them. I have an ex-wife who is just fantastic. One day we were chatting and I asked; “What would you like to change about yourself?” Her reply took me aback as she proclaimed that there was nothing. The true right and wrong never changes. But we had better continue to grow and hopefully that will create new perspectives of what that right and wrong really is. And starting with thinking about it for us will be of great help.

Imagine what it would be like to tell a young child to stop growing mentally. I think we could agree that would basically be a wrong thing to do. (Don’t get me wrong here, I tell my young son to stop growing up so fast;-)

Hopefully you have a partner. If not find your best friend. And ask them to sit down with you and go through your shared or not shared values. A funny for instance perhaps. My wife is a clean freak and I am a nature freak. We do not share the same values there. She would rather spend a night in a fancy hotel and I would rather spend a night in a sleeping bag in the dirt after a day of hiking.

That gets us to a very good space. Because we get to say “to me it is wrong to lay in dirt” or “it is wrong to waste money on fancy hotels”. Or the reverse; right to stay in hotel or right to sleep under the stars. Just three years ago the hotel was right for my boy, now nature and hiking is. How can it be right to bring a garden snake into the house? Well it is for a 10 year old boy but probably not for his mom.

So do’s and don’ts are often personal. We have to be careful there.

Hopefully you have a partner. If not find your best friend. And ask them to sit down with you and go through your shared or not shared values. A funny for instance perhaps. My wife is a clean freak and I am a nature freak. We do not share the same values there. She would rather spend a night in a fancy hotel and I would rather spend a night in a sleeping bag in the dirt after a day of hiking.

That gets us to a very good space. Because we get to say “to me it is wrong to lay in dirt” or “it is wrong to waste money on fancy hotels”. Or the reverse; right to stay in hotel or right to sleep under the stars. Just three years ago the hotel was right for my boy, now nature and hiking is. How can it be right to bring a garden snake into the house? Well it is for a 10 year old boy but probably not for his mom.

So do’s and don’ts are often personal. We have to be careful there.

Around here we say we can hate the action taken by, but not the man who did it. Hating another is wrong for us. I can understand that some people hate and have a right to but is it right? So much easier to speak of snakes. So our likes and dislikes are not the baseline. This is why we check in with another. Is it my “want to” or is it right to do?

We have to be ready to justify and not use a right thing as justification for a wrong thing. Religion and war come to mind. Or back to our boy with the bread. Do we get to beat up the bully?

We must teach the idea of right and wrong and not dictate it.

There is nothing wrong with “I don’t think that is right.” It is like giving the man a fish or teaching him “how to” fish. Telling your child what is wrong and right is fine as far as that goes and you should. But please take the time to tell him why you say so.

You do not want your child out it the world not knowing how to figure out what is right and what is wrong. I would bet that if our bread boy would have been taught that he would have grabbed a broom and cleaned up for the baker. Pick up some garbage. And only ask for “day old bread” (which is fine but does not taste as good or cost as much as freshly baked) we know the difference but without being taught the boy did not know the alternative to wrong. Who was there to tell him how to figure it out? Well who will be there when your daughter is pressured into wrong. Something you never could have foreseen. How does she decide what to do?

Teach, Don't Tell, You Still Have to Learn Too

She knows because you didn’t just answer but explained why when asked about right or wrong or doing right and wrong. And for sure you slowed down enough to explain yourself and work on “do as I do not as I say”.

Who is teaching whom here? If children bring out the best in us, the other way around is always true.

Books are great. Ton’s of them out there with reference to this. Me, I am a weirdo with a philosophy and law degree and a preacher man. I love codifications of religious and statutory law that tell us what we can and can’t do. If you read that stuff day in and day out like I do. You do not know better about right and wrong than a parent does.

That difference is about love. No one can love your child like you do. And if you take the time teaching how to decide right from wrong, you prove it.