Five ways to raise children with good values

Every parent wants to raise a kind child. A resilient child. A child who knows how to forgive, how to keep going when things get hard, and how to treat the people around them with genuine care.

The question is how. Here are five practical, research-backed approaches that work, whether you are starting with a toddler or course-correcting with a ten-year-old.

01. Model the behaviour you want to see

The single most powerful thing you can do is show your child what good values look like in practice. Not explain them. Show them.

Psychologist Albert Bandura's decades of research on social learning established that children's moral reasoning shifts directly after observing adults make moral judgements, and that these changes hold over time and generalise to new situations. In other words, children do not just hear what you say. They internalise what you do.

When you apologise after making a mistake, speak kindly to someone who frustrates you, or share without being asked, your child is watching and filing that away. No lesson plan required.

Source: Bandura, A. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

02. Use play as a practice ground

Play is where values get tested before the stakes are high. When children play games together they face real choices about whether to share, how to handle losing, and what to do when something feels unfair.

Research published in Behavioural and Brain Sciences found that peer play forces children to reason about others' feelings, and that it serves as a unique mechanism for empathy development. Cooperative games in particular, where players work together or take turns, build the social muscles that underpin kindness, patience and forgiveness.

A family game night is not just fun. It is practice.

Source: Brownell, C.A. et al. (2002). Peers, cooperative play, and the development of empathy in children. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 25(1), Cambridge University Press.

03. Tell and read stories together

Stories give children a safe way to rehearse difficult emotions and moral situations before they encounter them in real life. When a child roots for a character who chooses forgiveness, or watches a character keep going after failure, they are building an emotional template for how to respond when those situations arrive for real.

Empirical research shows that storytelling improves vocabulary, emotional regulation and empathy while also fostering critical thinking. Characters children can genuinely relate to carry values in a way that abstract instruction simply cannot.

You do not need a library or a curriculum. A story at bedtime about a character who chose kindness, who forgave when it was hard, who tried again, that lands differently than a lecture.

Source: Isbell, R., Sobol, J., Lindauer, L. and Lowrance, A. (2004). The Effects of Storytelling and Story Reading on the Oral Language Complexity and Story Comprehension of Young Children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 32(3), 157-163.

04. Talk openly about mistakes (yours included)

Resilience is not an inborn trait. It is built through experience, specifically, through the experience of making a mistake and discovering that life continues, that repair is possible, and that trying again is worth it.

Psychologist Carol Dweck's research demonstrated that children who develop what she calls a growth mindset, the belief that character and ability can be developed through effort show higher achievement across challenges and greater resilience in the face of setbacks. And that mindset is shaped early, by how the adults around them respond to mistakes.

When a child sees a parent say 'I got that wrong and here is what I am going to do about it,' they learn that mistakes are information, not verdicts on who they are.

Source: Dweck, C.S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House. See also: Yeager, D.S. and Dweck, C.S. (2012). Mindsets That Promote Resilience. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302-314.

05. Use simple, repeated affirmations

The voice inside a child's head, the one they hear when they are trying something difficult or recovering from something painful is largely built from the words they hear repeatedly from the people they love most.

Research shows that the type of praise children receive shapes their mindset in lasting ways. Praise that emphasises effort and growth rather than fixed traits leads to children who are more resilient in the face of difficulty and more persistent when things get hard. Short, specific phrases repeated consistently over time become part of how a child sees themselves.

'You worked really hard at that.' 'That was kind of you.' 'You kept going even when it was difficult.' Those are the phrases that build the inner voice.

Source: Cimpian, A., Arce, H.M.C., Markman, E.M. and Dweck, C.S. (2007). Study cited in OECD Growth Mindset policy paper. Mueller, C. and Dweck, C.S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.

A note on where these values come from

Kindness, empathy, forgiveness, modesty and resilience are not exclusive to any one tradition. They are recognised across cultures and research fields as foundational to a good life and healthy relationships.

For Muslim families, these values are also woven throughout Islamic teaching. The Prophet ﷺ modelled mercy in his daily interactions and reminded his community: 'Allah will not be merciful to those who are not merciful to people.' (Sahih al-Bukhari 7376, Sahih Muslim 2319) The research and the tradition point in the same direction. You do not have to choose between them.

Where game night and values meet

The 5Pillars Muslim Manners Edition takes the values of good character and turns them into a game the whole family plays together. Every question is a conversation starter. Every round is a chance to practise the values, not just discuss them.

And for girls who need a character to look up to, the Salam Sisters each embody different values through their stories. Characters that show kindness, resilience and friendship in action, not just in words.

 

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