Right Vs. Wrong - Raising a Child with a Conscience: A Guide for Parents and Others Who Care About Children

How do you teach children to pursue goodness in a morally confusing world? In this book, three child-rearing experts offer useful advice for nurturing the conscience in children and adolescents. Written for parents, guardians, and all who work with young people, this book charts the growth of the sense of right and wrong in children ages five to seventeen. The authors describe important events in moral development: how crucial formative experiences instil feelings of moral connectedness to others how a sense of right and wrong finds expression in value-based rules how emotional well-being encourages rule-following as well as redress and healing after wrongdoing how the sense of moral autonomy and willpower changes over time. They identify five transformations during these ages, which result in five increasingly sophisticated stages of moral growth.The authors have named the stages after an important feature of each: the External stage, the Brain-Heart stage, the Personified stage, the Confused stage, and the Integrating stage. Each stage is illustrated by many examples and stories culled from years of interviews with children and adolescents. The authors give special attention to how children and adolescents perceive their parents and other adults as nurturing the development of their conscience. This insight becomes a springboard for recommending what parents should and should not do to nurture conscience at particular stages in their children's lives. Rearing a child with a healthy conscience is a dynamic process: development guides parenting and parenting guides development.This book also gives special attention to how human fallibility, defensiveness, and humour interact with our sense of right and wrong. The authors portray these feelings through a character named the Imp, representing mischief and fun, who comments throughout the book. And at times the authors step up on a soapbox to speak as passionate advocates of the rightful needs of all children and adolescents to receive moral nurturing. This book will help parents and other care givers in this carrying out this important task.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: What to expect from this book. 1. The Moral Theme in Development 2. Making the Moral Connection 3. Setting the Moral Barometer 4. Building the Authority of the Conscience 5. Pursuing the Golden Rule 6. Assuming Moral Responsibility 7. Conscience: A Conceptualisation of Dynamic, Developmental Importance Suggested Reading