When my two sons, now young adults, were in elementary school, on some days my wife and I were sure they were lying with completely straight faces when we interrogated them about the status of homework or chores or the shattered heirloom they were told never to touch. Then, before we could regroup, they were telling us about a new kid they befriended in school or any of a dozen other unexpected angelic deeds we assumed they would always be too self-centered to do.
Yes, I’m exaggerating. Our boys weren’t that extreme or unusual (though it sometimes felt like it to anxious parents). Like many children in middle childhood (roughly ages six to 12), our boys were just doing the messy work of internalizing the values that were important to them. That process often involves some winding detours that give parents and caregivers pits in the stomach—or worse.
At root, our fears were about the development of our children’s values—and thus their spiritual development. Last month, I published an article in Greater Good that described spirituality broadly to include “connectedness to one’s best self, to humanity, and to a higher power or a nonmaterial world, all of which bring to life a sense of meaning, wonder, peace, and purpose.”
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Though typically discussed as part of moral development, values are also integral to spiritual development, in that they describe the nature of our connectedness to ourselves, each other, the world around us, and the Sacred or Divine. Values are interwoven with spiritual development as well as its expression by many people in their religious commitments.
Researchers have found evidence of innate spirituality in infants; they also see some signs of prosocial values in infancy. At this early stage, the values mirror the mother’s warmth. A child’s distinct moral identity can begin to be evident around age five or six.
However, moral identity and values are relatively unstable or fluid until self-regulation and perspective-taking capacities emerge in later middle childhood. (Hence the flip-flop emotions my wife and I experienced with our sons!) Over time, children’s views of themselves begin to solidify as they internalize values in the context of their friends, family, and other influences while they are also developing their executive function (thinking) and emotional control capabilities.
Amid all of these influences and factors, their values become more abstract, consistent, stable, and connected to behaviors, according to Israeli scholars Ariel Knafo-Noam and his colleagues. Complicating matters, values develop in systems or hierarchies, with some groups of values much more important to one person than they are to another. For example, some people emphasize what Shalom H. Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem called “self-transcendent values” that focus on the interests of others, while others emphasize “self-enhancement values” that emphasize values such as achievement and power.
Even amid these dynamics, parents and families play central roles in how children sort out and internalize the values they ultimately adopt, even though there are never guarantees in parenting. Here are five tips for parents and caregivers to shape or influence children’s values.
1. Put your relationships first
As with most aspects of parenting, the quality of the parent-child relationships is the basis to a caregiver’s influence on a child’s values development. When these relationships are supportive, they provide fertile soil in which roots of moral development can grow. It was encouraging, then, when a 2021 Search Institute survey of more than 700 U.S. parents found that “showing my children that I love them and enjoy being with them” was their top priority.
Parent-child relationships could be the focus of the rest of this article (and, indirectly, it is). In addition, other Greater Good parenting articles highlight many ways to deepen parent-child relationships, focusing on different elements of relationships, the power of little moments together, how to talk to your children so they feel loved, the importance of all parenting adults (not just moms), and many others that are linked to these articles.
2. Walk your talk
The next priority caregivers highlighted in Search Institute’s 2021 survey was “modeling what it means to be a good person.”
Once again, parents seemed to know what matters when nurturing values. “Parents act as moral role models for their children, influencing not only how children internalize moral values but also how they navigate moral decisions over time,” write German scholars Jessica Wilke and Annika Rademacher. “By consistently demonstrating empathy, fairness, and moral reasoning, parents . . . [ensure] that these values remain central even as external influences, such as peers and societal norms, become more prominent in later developmental stages.”
Having children watching us to learn from us can be a humbling experience. “Why do I get in trouble for saying those bad words when you say them sometimes?” “Why did you tell Mr. Jones you thought his new car was a great deal when you told me that you thought it was a waste of money?” Children can be reminders that we can do a better job of walking our talk!
3. Talk your walk
A Mark Twain quote from 1897 is often paraphrased as follows: “If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on a hot stove again. That cat won’t sit on a cold stove either. That cat just won’t like stoves.” The point? Our children may not be learning what we hope they’re learning from us if we don’t talk with them about it. Why do we make the choices we make? Was it hard? Are we glad that we did it? When we make a mistake, do we apologize and seek to correct it?
This can be hard; it could sound like bragging. What’s important is to tell our stories (and other stories from our families), not to turn ourselves or anyone else into a flawless hero or saint. It also opens a space for our children to tell us their stories—both when things go well and when they don’t, which also helps them internalize their own experiences and what really matters to them.
4. Learn together and from each other
One of the blind spots in much of the past scientific research on values and moral development is that it focused almost exclusively on how parents “transmit” values to children. In reality (and as newer research is showing), it is more accurate to think about “exchanging” values or, perhaps, a give and take in shaping values. To be sure, parents and caregivers come to the relationship with greater responsibility, experience, and learned skills and behaviors, all of which give them greater influence on their children. At the same time, children bring their own personalities, tendencies, and spirit to the relationship, and they also influence, even change, the values of their parents.
Different things become more important because they are important to our children. Virtually every parent could think of multiple examples almost immediately. Just think about how your schedule changed when children became part of your family. Or what about when a child became interested in a sport, musical instrument, or a social justice cause? Then think about the parents who change their lives to support and advocate for a child who has special needs, faces a chronic illness, or faces social ostracism due to their gender identity. In small and large ways, children change our values, too.
An important gift we give to our children is opportunities to articulate what’s important to them and—when we want to encourage those values—ways to put those values into practice. Even more powerful is to learn from them and walk with them as they internalize values that clearly reflect and express who they are.
5. Be realistic
Each of us believes things are valuable or virtuous that we simply don’t do (or do as we’d like to do). On the other hand, we know some things are bad, harmful, or even evil. Yet we still find ourselves doing them. We know it’s important to lose weight, stop smoking, read more, or do less doomscrolling. Yet we keep doing—or not doing—these very things. Some might be trivial. Others are serious, even deadly.
This belief-action gap isn’t new. Greek philosophers Socrates and Aristotle struggled with it. In the early days of Christianity, the Apostle Paul lamented in this tongue-twister: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (Romans 7:19). Children are less subtle as they get older: “You’re a hypocrite!” Or “They’re all just hypocrites!”
Theologians and scholars used to blame this belief–behavior gap on a person’s “weakness of will,” a moral failing or a lapse of character. We now know that actions aren’t based only on cognitive reasoning and beliefs; they are strongly shaped by feelings, instinctual reactions, habits, racing thoughts, the environment around us, and many other factors. In addition, the gap between values and actions can be the result of a disease or disorder, as is the case with addictions (though they are still widely viewed as character flaws).
Personal willpower doesn’t generate a wellspring of life-giving values. Memorizing lists of virtues won’t provide the wisdom needed when faced with pressure-filled or perplexing choices. Instead, living out values grows from a deep well of relationships, experiences, commitments, and influences that accumulate over time. These values are lived, modeled, talked about, practiced, and expected all around us, becoming part of who we are—our character. At some point, we don’t even have to think about them to act on them. They become intuitive, like riding a bicycle or swimming.
And that, in the end, is our hope for our children.
At the same time, we know that internalizing and living out values isn’t as simple as learning ride a bike. It is even harder when competing values drive contentious choices, as often happens in this complex and changing world. (See—and use—the PDF checklist, “Values You Intentionally Nurture With Your Children.”)
Thus, our fervent hope as parents and caregivers is that children will, over time, discover the wisdom in discerning their way centered in their connectedness: A connectedness to their core identities, to others in supportive families and communities, to the world around them, and to a sacred power or spirit, whom they may know as God. Together, these bring our deepest values into focus with clarity, meaning, and purpose.
