Raising Moral Kids
Strengthening Internal Dialogue Skills
By Dr. Elisa Medhus, MD
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Now, let's look at an example of modeling that creates self-directed thinking: "Mom says she wants us to use our words instead of hitting each other. She's never laid a hand on us, so I know she really believes in that rule. Hey, I don't like being hit, so why should I hit my little sister? I'm going to talk to Annika about how I feel when she steals my Barbie clothes instead of pummeling her." Here, through a completely self-directed internal dialogue, the little girl uses her mom's consistency to help her examine the significance of a rule. She decides to obey that rule because her behavior is morally wrong, not because she's told to.
Strengthening Internal Dialogue Skills
There are other parenting strategies that encourage self-direction in children. Those include:
- the family environment we create,
- the discipline techniques we use,
- how we communicate with our kids,
- whether we empathy-train them,
- whether we help them develop defeat-recovery skills,
- whether we encourage them to develop and use their own natural intuition,
- and whether or not we help them develop healthy internal dialogue.
These are all described in great detail in Raising Children Who Think for Themselves.
Once their internal dialogue skills and sense of self become strong, our children will no longer be vulnerable to those tactics that make a bad choice seem good: tactics responsible for the relative morality that, sadly, is so prevalent today. Some of these morality warpers we'll be able to kiss goodbye through self-direction include self-deceit, excuses, rationalizations, blame shifting, and justifications. And without these negative factors coming into play, our children will be better equipped to resist acting upon their temptations and emotional impulses. With these choice-distorting tools no longer a threat to their sound judgement, they will be able to do the right thing for the right reason. And that's what morality is all about.
Elisa Medhus, M.D. is author of Raising Children Who Think for Themselves. A veteran physician of thirteen years, Dr. Medhus is also the mother of five children ages 6 through 17.
