Learn how parents can help children develop character traits.
Here’s how parents can promote character traits in their children (even the kids will think it’s cool).
Learn how family meetings can help instill character traits (and more)
Parents can help their kids develop character traits by teaching them.
I’ve talked about how to emulate it, how to demonstrate it, but let’s make it more specific.
As for our family, we used to have family meetings, and we had them every Sunday evening.
There was definitely a purpose to those family meetings.
We didn’t just ask, what are you doing tomorrow? What are your plans for next week?
We got really specific.
As a family, we wanted to know why we were put on this earth and why we mattered.
We also wanted to use it as an opportunity to collectively teach what matters most.
Thus, we experienced a period of change in approximately seven months or so.
As a result, 29 character traits were identified.
Each of our kids was given a character trait and asked to present it to the family.
Learn what the most important character traits are to succeed in life?
Witness how intentional family meetings became a family-friendly competition
Each child taught our family and returned their presentation successfully.
They researched and taught the family what mercy and grace are, as well as honesty and humility.
They were giving presentations every week (with enthusiasm).
My wife and I were so excited and looked forward to it every week.
What’s amazing now is that the unintended consequence of this activity is that they all started competing with each other.
By the time we had covered all 29 character traits, a number of kids were making presentations to the family about such traits using the Prezi platform.
To celebrate the completion of the last three character traits, we invited our parents and grandparents over.
We invited aunts, uncles, and friends because these presentations became so epic.
This not only taught them that character is important, but also how to give a good presentation.
Therefore, you can teach your kids these qualities by being purposeful and intentional about them.
Here’s how parents can help their kids by purposefully teaching them
Here’s something you’ll enjoy – our children have become young adults and have started reminiscing.
In fact, recently we were having dinner and somehow our kids brought up our past family meetings on character traits.
A side note here is that we let them think that their traits were randomly assigned.
The truth is, my wife and I sat down and determined which character trait was most valuable to each kid, according to what we felt would be most beneficial to them.
Sometimes the best way to learn is by teaching.
By teaching their siblings character traits, they were really teaching themselves.
They laughed because we didn’t even have to answer the question.
They simply figured out that their character traits were not accidental, they were very purposeful.
The kids were also very thankful that we cared enough about them to put in the effort, to make sure they had a character trait that they could grow from and that they could teach their families.
So, here’s the deal, in our family, we’ve taught many things over the years, but teaching and explaining character traits to them is by far the most important one.
Do you have family meetings (yet)?