PEARL 46

Values: Passing Them

On to Your Kids

Every day it seems there’s another story of the decline in values in our

youth in the United States. Drugs are available in even remote rural
schools. Teenage sexually transmitted infections are skyrocketing. In
many schools, teachers are more police officers than they are instructors.
A troubling materialism rears its ugly head even among elementary
school students. In our society, proper moral values seem to be taking a
pretty good licking. As parents, this disturbing trend brings the cold
sweat of responsibility to our furrowed brows. “I want my children to
have responsible moral values,” we say, “but how do I teach them those
values?”
Parents cannot make their kids think like they do simply by telling
them, “You’ll do it or else.” Demands and threats may yield short-term
results, but they don’t mold our kids’ minds. They don’t persuade them
that we’re right. In a real sense, parenting is the transmitting of our
values to our kids. We want our kids to be honest; we want them to
respect others; we want them to know the value of hard work; we want a
moral and ethical lifestyle to be as important to them as it is to us.
However, there’s bad news and good news in this question of
transmitting values. The bad news is that we can’t stroll down the wide
and easy road of lecturing our kids on the topic. It might have worked for
our parents, but the odds for success have radically tipped the other way.
The good news, though, is that it is still possible to pass on our values to
our kids, but it’s going to take some thought and effort.