How to use this Page

FRIENDS!! If you are like me, you have a great group of friends. My friends teach me the lessons of life by the way they live. My friend Lucy is a servant. My friend Nancy has a huge loving heart. My friend Ronnie taught me how to draw cartoons. My friend Leana is wise. My friend Karen is my party friend, always bringing us all together to laugh. My friend JoAnn is a chef! My friend Juanita is a creative soul. My friend Rachelle is soft-hearted. My friend Lin is a kindred spirit. My friend Sue is an amazing teacher. All my artist friends AMAZE me! … the list goes on. All are unique. All are a part of my heart. I am thankful!

Last week I spent time with my Vivian friend. We were going to go visit our friend Clara in a nursing home. I wrote out a little card and tucked it in my purse. When Vivian got to my home she came bearing flowers, magazines and muffins! All were for Clara. I watched Vivian talk to Clara. She was all there, in the moment, not thinking about what she was going to do when we left. She was completely present and asking Clara this and that. It was wonderful to watch. Her heart was bursting with love. It made me smile.  THANK YOU VIV!

You see, to have friends you have to be a friend. We can all improve.

You have to get outside yourself and look into their faces and participate in their lives. Lives touching lives makes us all better people.

By Kenneth Barish

At this holiday season, I would like to offer a few thoughts on how we can help nurture in our children a spirit of generosity and concern for others. I cannot write this post, however, without first expressing my deepest condolences to the families of Newtown, Connecticut, for their unimaginable and unbearable loss.

Much of the year, parents are understandably concerned with their children’s achievement. We focus our daily attention on helping children develop the skills they will need to succeed in a competitive world.

Most parents, however, want more for their children than individual achievement. We also want them to be “good kids” — children who act with kindness and generosity toward their families, their friends, and their communities. These are universal values, shared by parents who are secular and religious, liberal and conservative.

How can we best accomplish these goals? How can we nurture a child’s feelings of empathy and concern for others, of appreciation and gratitude, and a desire for giving, not just getting.

Caring and Responsibility

Several years ago, psychologists Nancy Eisenberg and Paul Mussen presented a comprehensive review of research on the development of pro-social behavior (caring, sharing, and helping) in children. They concluded that pro-social behavior begins with a child’s empathy (her awareness of the feelings of others) and is then strengthened when children observe the caring behavior of admired adults and older children.

For young boys, a warm relationship with their father may be especially important. In one study, preschool boys who were generous toward other children portrayed their fathers as “nurturant and warm, as well as generous, sympathetic, and compassionate, whereas boys low in generosity seldom perceived their fathers in these ways.”

Eisenberg and Mussen also found that, across cultures, children who are given family responsibilities, including household chores and teaching younger children, show more helpful and supportive behavior toward their families and their peers.

In a more recent series of studies, psychologist Ross Thompson and his colleagues found that children’s moral understanding and pro-social behavior were also strengthened by a mother’s use of emotion language in conversation with her child. Mothers of children who were high in conscience used what Thompson labelled an “elaborative” conversational style and made frequent references to other people’s feelings.

Ideals and Idealism

In thinking about children’s moral development, we also need to remember the intangibles. Our children look up to us. They look up to us even when they are angry and defiant, or when they are defensive or withdrawn, and even when, as adolescents (or before), they challenge our ideas and rebel against our rules.

Because they look up to us, they want to be, and to become, like us. We can observe this, every day, in the admiring statements of young children, when first grade boys and girls tell their teacher, “I want to be fireman, like my daddy” or “I want to be a doctor and help people, like my mom.” Recall the looks on the faces of Scout and Jem when Atticus talks with them, or when he delivers his summation to the jury in To Kill a Mockingbird.

A child’s admiration of her parents is an important moral influence throughout childhood — a source of conscience, ideals, and long-term goals. When a child looks up to us — and in return, feels our genuine interest, warmth, and pride — we have strengthened an important pathway of healthy development, a pathway that leads toward commitment to ideals and a sense of purpose in life.

We also support our children’s idealism when we talk with them about people we admire, people who have inspired us and who we hope will inspire them. We need to let them know that there is so much good work to be done in the world, work that they will be able to do and can do, even now. And we should help them appreciate what others do for us. We should talk with them about heroes who may not be famous, heroes of everyday life: the people who build our cities, protect our safety, and save our lives.

Doing for Others

A growing body of scientific research now supports an important conclusion: Doing good for others is also good for us. Most of this research has been conducted with late adolescents and adults. My personal experience suggests that doing for others is also good for children.

In a recent review, psychologist Jane Piliavin concluded that community service (helping others as part of an institutional framework) leads to improved self-esteem, less frequent depression, better immune system functioning, even a longer life.

Piliavin found significant benefits when older elementary school students read to kindergartners or first graders. Good effects, including lower dropout rates, were also reported when middle school students were randomly assigned to tutor younger children, as little as 1 hour a week. An evaluation of student volunteering that involved 237 different locations and almost 4,000 students concluded that volunteering “led to increased intrinsic work values, the perceived importance of a career, and the importance of community involvement.”

I therefore now recommend that parents find some way, especially as a family, to make doing for others a regular, not just occasional, part of their children’s lives. Children learn from this work that they have something to offer and they experience the appreciation of others. They learn how good it feels, to themselves and to others, to do good work.

Kenneth Barish is the author of Pride and Joy: A Guide to Understanding Your Child’s Emotions and Solving Family Problems and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University. He is also on the faculty of the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the William Alanson White Institute Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy Training Program. Read his previous blog posts on parenting.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only psychology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Image credit: Big sister sharing her books and showing little brother pictures. Photo by JLBarranco, iStockphoto.

The post Nurturing a spirit of caring and generosity in children appeared first on OUPblog.

Last year I illustrated a picture book titled, A Caring Deed For Becky for Featherweight Press. It was written by Susan Wigden.

I've spelled her name "Widgen" incorrectly at least a thousand times, but that's neither here nor there.

In any case, Susan is currently making the rounds with the book and I thought I'd post a video of a school reading she did earlier this year.

 Want a copy? Of course you do.

Get it through Amazon HERE and Barnes and Noble HERE.

 5 Stars Johnny loves to splash and crash in the ocean waves—naked.  Then one day Mom says he’s too old to run around without clothes on.  But Johnny thinks being naked is just fine. What will it take for Johnny to start wearing clothes? Three-year-old Johnny, who is really closer to age four, loves to [...]

What constitutes family? Does it come only in the form of childbirth placement, bringing baby home from the hospital, and then living with this new creature long enough to include them in the family photo carried inside your heart?

For myself, I’ve adopted people into my heart and my family many times during my adulthood. Yesterday I talked briefly about one man and his whole family whom I adopted in the 1990’s. Today, I chose to talk about another. Before I do, I want to explain one point.

I believe that as adults we adopt, whether acknowledged or not, those people who help define us to ourselves. Lou was one who encouraged me to play and not be so serious all the time, to relax without losing focus, to enjoy without dismissing the importance of other things. He and his family taught me many things. Through them I gained a broader understanding of the quality of family.

My first adopted sister was a college roommate. She and I survived tuna casseroles and pasta staples for a school year in a tiny apartment that gave us independence and an opportunity to exercise by walking to classes a mile away. We grew as people and as sisters.

Her family adopted me. I gathered them all into my expanding basket of potential family members. Cheryl was the first person to encourage me to write, who, in fact, sat down with me in off time and helped me write my first science fiction book. We wrote seamlessly together.

When she graduated at the end of that year, the book ended, but not the dream or intent of writing. Our friendship and sisterhood didn’t falter there, either. She named me Maid of Honor for her wedding, named me Godmother of her girls as they came along, and drove with her husband for two hours to be there for me at my mother’s funeral. She loved my mom almost as much as I did after having met her only a couple of times.

We no longer get the time to talk like we once did. Her life of motherhood, wife, and work keep her busy. My youngest goddaughter is getting married before long. I’d love to be there for that.

Throughout these many years of our friendship, Cheryl and I have remained connected. We could meet tomorrow and pick up conversations where we’d left off twenty years ago. That’s the kind of relationship we have. I would feel comfortable in her newly renovated kitchen; a kitchen I remember sitting in several times with her and her family, laughing, kibitzing, sharing.

I could rummage around in her new fridge and grab whatever I wanted to eat at midnight and not feel a bit of guilt or distress, because she’d be more upset if I didn’t feed my hunger. That’s part of who she is. I’m family, after all.

And while we’ve been separated by thousands of miles since the mid-eighties, we manage to talk once in a while, catch up, and commiserate. If we’re very lucky, one of these days we’ll meet somewhere for a few days and just play, shop, and laugh like we did at BSU. That would be a capper.

Yet, the real capper to the whole story is that my mother adopted Cheryl into her heart as well. I guess I followed my mother’s habits more than most realized. Mom tended to adopt all sorts of people, sometimes as much out of necessity as anything else.

In the end, I suppose, family is defined by those we hold close in our hearts, our thoughts, and our memories. I would be a lesser person if I’d never known this sweet lady with a smile that shines across a room and a generous spirit who holds true to her convictions and faith, regardless of provocation.

Like Lou and his family, Cheryl helped me define myself and what family really means for me. That’s what more important than bloodlines.

The way I see it, family is all relative.