Raising Moral Children

By Dr. Lynn Scoresby

304 notes in Cambria
242 notes in this font

Part 1
- Jesus Christ is introduced, “Behold the man!” His character
was His ultimate accomplishment
- What does moral mean to me? What is a definition I could
give to a young child?
- I am the transmitter of morality to my children. How am I
doing morally now?
- 3:13 – community standards that we all share, for the welfare of society, parents are
the transmitters of these standards to their kids. How we function in are
families determines whether are kids “get it” or not.
- Moses and the burning bush, “I am that I am, if everything
else was unstable or inconsistent there would be at least
one person that is consistent.”
- Deviance: a person knows what the standards are and
deviates from them.
- 7:10 if people know what is right, why don’t they do it? How does morality develop
over time? What are the measurements?
- Dr. Scoresby studied individuals who did highly moral
things and studied their lives to figure out what.
o This could be a reason why President Nelson has asked
YSA to read the biographies of the prophets and to
study the life of Christ
o Director of English Secret Service during WW2
- 12:14 recognize that the time is unique to raise children
o 1. Nature of relationship that children participate in are not as constant as
they used to be
o 2. Today society values don’t match values we teach in our homes, children
experience great contradiction between ideas taught at home and school,
institutions are not reliable
 Children are often thrown into contradiction
circumstances where what they were told in one
environment is not the case in another (home,
school, church)
o 3. Shift in our values, they have become short term (grades vs. knowledge)
 We are much more prone to talk to are children
about greats rather than knowledge
o 4. Talk of events, versus morality (marry in the temple, go on a mission,
versus helping them develop the morale needed
 This is so so so so true! I want to be the parent
that helps my children develop the morals they
need!
  “We want you to develop the skills and
conversion necessary to worthily serve a
full-time mission.”
 It’s a process, not an event
- The family is a morale environment – there are rules, tasks, and relationships, and
emotional events
- “emotional events are so significant that anything learned in the family is more
memorable and valuable then learned anywhere else”
- Teaching Morality
o 1. Have a shared or agreed upon definition of morality:
o “morality needs to be easy for children to understand, make sense, and have
power or force for children to do something (act upon it)”
o Charity is high morality
o Definition: Any intention or act which helps someone (like charity),
immorality is any intention or act that harms someone.
 When you ask most people what morality is they
will say something like “compliance to sex or
rules” What they are not seeing is that rules and
sexual relationships are established to help and
avoid hurting others.
o “Did you help anyone today?” – question to ask children
 Do children know what the word help means?
 Do children know what the word harm means?
 Emotional, mental, and spiritual harm
o How do you get kids to choose what is moral?
o 26:47 when a child commits an immoral act parents commonly say, “You
know better than that.” No they don’t, they’ve heard better than that, that’s
why he is doing it
o What insures that someone acts on what he has been taught?
 The context or the circumstance in which the behavior takes place is
the greatest control of human behavior
 John the garbage is pilling up (in the
kitchen)
 John the garbage is pilling up (at the dump)
 Context and circumstance are the difference
o Moral circumstance
 4 parts
 child (agent) most reason, decide and act
 child’s knowledge of rules and standards
 child and his/her relationships with others
 some tasks that have to be performed in that situation
 Social conventions are not moral behavior, they
are social conventions
o know difference between what is moral (harm or help) and what is a social
convention
 o Large Harmed or helped in
 Sexual behavior
 Money and property
 Work and school
 Self respect or self destruction (suicide, disorders)
 Authority relationship
 Friendships
 Chemicals/drugs
o Children’s first concept of morality are learned from
theirs family orientation toward competence,
relationships with people, and knowledge of moral
standards
o A moral family environment leads to a moral person, some exceptions
 A child with a learning disorder, at higher risk in terms of learning
moral behavior
o Kids develop a reaction range. Some are highly
reactive to incoming stimulation (vulnerable children)

Part 2

- If you overemphasize compliance to rules and authority what is going to happen?

o Child will focus on compliance to rule first, instead of other parts of other
moral circumstances
o Many follow the rules and sacrifice the people, they are not sensitive to
implications to others, but they will follow the rules.
o Rules are good, but overemphasizing them is not.
o The truth is, sometimes in order to be moral you have to break the rules, so if
children are so worried about breaking the rules they wont exercise proper
morality
o Children will be more compliant, but only when authority figures are present.
o Children may learn that they appear to obey (hypocrisy)
o Makes children anxious, they believe security is found in compliance, that is
okay, but if it is excess it can be destructive.
 Willingly to blame, tattle or hurt other people
if they are not compliant
- If you overemphasize work, performance and achievement
o Children will believe that achievement is more important than the morality
of obtaining them (grades and cheating)
o RS President of the 29th ward, or RS President of 29 sisters
o Do we focus on what people have done or who they are?
- If you overemphasize relationships
o Children will be people pleasers
o Vulnerable
o Social success
o Learn to manipulate/decieve to get approval (Please clean the bathroom.
How much will you pay me? You really should clean it because I asked you)
 o Children may lie for approval
o Children doesn’t have own opinions, molds opinions of who they are around
(parents, friends etc)
o Loss of individuality
- Character is made up of behavior traits that people tend to
exhibit across one situation or another so that they can do
it even if other people don’t and they can do it on a
consistent basis
- External things don’t cause behavior, you case your own behavior (AGENT)
- Understand what the task is, who it affects, what the standard is, and know that it is
up to you
o This forms character (traits that are used in any situation)
o How can you tell if a child is developing a moral character?
 Tells and lives the truth
 Means they can say what they’ll do and do what they say,
they can represent facts well, and tell about their feelings
 Learns gradual control with sensory appetites
 Balance personal standards against pressure from other people
 Display deep feelings, understand things from an emotional
perspective
 Can form deep relationships with others
o 3-4 years children learn about relationships with other people (specifically
language)
o middle childhood children learn rules, and standards, and management of
emotional behavior, you have to adapt your emotions from one situation to
another (Church vs. recess)
 learn right from wrong, management of personal
behavior, adaptation of personal behavior
o 11-12 years Competence and self-awareness
o 13+ Internalizing – take ideas they have heard and begin to make application,
they test them according to their own experiences. At this stage preteens like
private time, this is important
- People with character disorders do not like to talk about
themselves (story about asking the teenager to keep a
journal), they are also seekers of sensual and sexual
pleasure (this makes them think good), they have an
exaggerated goal to impress others, it’s their primarily
goal, their whole thought process is in terms of how people
will react to what they do, it’s a personal fable
o They display shallow emotions, do not show deep
emotion
o Have a hard time forming deep relationships with
others
- What’s the goal of moral development?
o Formation of character
 Tell and live the truth
  Have gradual control over sensual appetite
 Balance personal standards against pressure
 Learn how to display deep feeling
 Form committed relationships with other people
- A humans brain is organized structurally to increase a
person’s ability to integrate additional facts into a
concept as we mature
o There is a natural integration that takes place, if we
know that is happening it is easier to know how to act
as parents to know how to help are children understand
morals
- Purpose of confession: not to describe in detail the evil
we have done, but because we did evil, confession requires
to admit why we did something

Part 3 and 4

- 3 things to promote integration of 4 parts of moral circumstance.

o 1. moral reasoning: interpret the situation
 way children see whether someone can be helped or hurt
 teach children what helps and hurts others in very specific situations
 distinguish people from things, the program or the people
 do we know people or programs
 peopleness is what children need to know
 understand feelings, what people intent/plan to do
 People liked to be asked, “What’s on your
mind?”
o People have needs!!!!!
 what is eternal?
 What is eternal about all that we do?
o It’s THE PEOPLE!!
o What’s more important – the people or
the program
 What are they thinking?
 Do we know peopleness?
 Peopleness is what you need to
teach kids in order to be moral
 Be aware of yourselves and
others
 Examine disciplinary plan
 Before punishment, sit down and talk what happened to them
and those it effected
 Punishments don’t change behavior
 Characteristics of moral reasoning:
  empathy: ability to understand the emotions of another
person, and feel as they feel. Defensness is opposite of
empathy it is being unaware of own feelings, shift
sresponsibility of problem to someone else, blame, make
excuses
o Being defensive makes it hard to understand others
o How to teach/foster empathy
 Induction conversation that teach deep
understanding of feelings. “Tell me what you
feel” “How do you feel” “this is what I feel”
 Show example of helpful concern for others
 Help children examine their own feelings, make
sure to identify their feelings
 Instead of calling someone beautiful, identify the
emotion. “You look cheerful, happy, kind”
 Teach the emotion of remorse, it is essential to
moral behaviour
o Second characteristic is acceptance: desire and ability to
know and understand a person from their point of
view before you pose judgment. It doesn’t mean you
agree with someone, but you listen and strive to
understand. Acceptance is an attractive behavior.
Opposite of acceptance is prejudice, pre-judgment
 How to teach acceptance
o Don’t use words like: jerk, geek, wimp, whiner, etc.
 These are Prejudice terms
o Accept individual differences
o Teach not to impulsively judge others
o Occasionally say to child, “now before I react to this I’d
like you to share with me what your thoughts, and
feelings were before you did this.” (accept your own
children!)
o In order to teach acceptance, you must
feel acceptance
 Teach help/hurt of sex
 The minute I seek to use you for my pleasure I am immoral…I am
immoral at the thought!
o 2. moral judgment: decided whether to help or hurt
 how to teach
 start focusing on the development of character
 the kids who are overly conforming to the needs of other
people are really vulnerable to give in in moral situations
 teach right and wrong
o we teach consequences of wrong much more than the
consequences of right *****the most important
 punishment is to have your children figure out what
was right
o most children have to be taught how to decide, make
them go through the process of choosing, especially at
12 or 13
o if you want to teach moral judgment, teach children to
regulate their emotions behavior and be able to adapt it.
The ones who can adjust from one situation to another
emotionally and the ones who can regulate the intensity
of their emotions are the ones who are moral.
o Why are emotions so important in moral judgment?
Emotions are how you discriminate between things.
Reverence is the emotion that helps us discriminate
between the sacred and the profane.
 Teach autonomy: I’m responsible for myself and I’m the one
responsible for how I’ll act, the opposite is vulnerability.
 Teach conversation skills
o How? Teach autonomy, tell me what you’re
think/feeling, teach children to have emotions, write
down emotions on a piece of paper for a family night
and have them express the emotions.
o Turn off television for a significant portion of the day.
 Are the problems confronting society related to the failure to
be able to function well with relationships with one other? The
root cause of chemical abuse in our society is the absence of
significant emotional connections within the family unit. When
kids do not feel emotional tied to people in their own family.
 Moral judgments are all emotional
 Judgments will be made based upon kids knowledge of moral
standards. The consequences of their judgments and their
ability to regulate and adapt strong feelings. Consequences of
use? Dependency, addiction, reduced performance laws are
broken, loss of self-control.
 If you want to warn your kids off chemical abuse, go show
them people who have these addictions, don’t just tell them.
 Emotions kids will all have to regulate: Need to belong, need to
experiment, need to express anger, need for love and attention,
and need for identity.
o 3. moral conduct: must act, do something in a situation
 children with a positive, emotional style: cheerfulness, happiness, fun,
warmth….are more resistant to temptation and less likely to be
vulnerable