Five Lasting Values for Your Child

By Chhavi Gupta

Today’s world is fast-paced and parents all around the world are unsure of what to teach our children today. Most parents improvise as they go along while others just follow the generational parenting methods. No matter how much the times are changing, we will always have the need to live our lives fully, with joy and courage; and to hold values that make us become better individuals.

What are these values? I gave these a lot of thought and research and would like to present the following five essential lessons for your child:

1. Happiness: It is extremely important to teach a child to be happy. It is not necessary to be happy all the time, but the habit of being pleased makes for a generous and positive personality. Happy experiences make for lovely memories that can be cherished throughout our lives.

Seeing my daughter light up at the sight of an orange makes me wonder how easy it can be to teach our children the power of being happy and content. Children, especially young ones are capable of finding happiness in the smallest of things and we as parents should encourage them to be joyful. A parent can do this best by rewarding yourself, enjoying this world and having a good time; and your child will catch joy from you.

2. Love: It is important to teach a child how to sustain love. Every child needs the kind of love that can be trusted, that stays and never leaves. In order to be a true human being, every child needs to know how to be a loving person.

In order to make sure that your child truly embodies love and carries that ever-sustaining warmth, always provide your child with the daily contact with a loving adult-yourself!

3. Honesty: I would definitely teach a child the importance of integrity. Every society needs integrity- the quality of being able to be trusted. It means not lying to each other, that we do what we say, that we are honest in our love and our praise.

A child learns trustworthiness best of all when we hold them accountable for a task until it is finished; to trust them to do things on their own which they may spoil in the process.

4. Courage: Teaching a child to be brave is also important. Every child needs a lesson in this if he is to live his life with integrity and sustain life’s failures without being thrown by them.

How can you teach your child to be brave? Comfort your child when s/he is in trouble. Let them know you understand but do not stop the flow of tears. Accept a grieving child’s feelings and permit him to express them.

5. Faith: Give a child something to believe in. There can be a lot of things someone can care about: a child dreaming to become an astronaut, or Gandhi’s vision of freeing his people. We as parents cannot give our children something to dream of, but we can listen to our child’s plans and hopes and whenever possible help to make them come true.

Open your child the world of books, music and art to help them find something for inspiration. Finally, we can offer religious faith- the most spacious of all things to believe in. If a child believes there is a good God in charge, life becomes much safer and clearer.

These according to me are the most important lessons for every child. Please do comment below what you thought about these and what you try to teach your children every day.