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Our best Parenting Idea number 9 of 10 has to do with having a plan for developing character in children. We feel that the trouble with so much of what we call “parenting” is that it’s a defense rather than an offense. The “experts” all seem to be saying, “If you have this problem, try this solution,” or “If Johnny does this, you try that.” The old adage of the best defense being a good offense isn’t applied very much. Most parents really don’t have a plan!

If you ask a business manager or owner what his goals and plans are, he or she will hand you his vision statements, sales targets, pro forma financials, and show you his offense. But ask a parent about his family goals and plans and the answer is likely to be much more general, “To raise my kids,” “To keep them out of trouble,” “To have a happy family.” How impressed would you be if the business person answered his question that generally, “To have a nice company,” . . . “To avoid going bankrupt.”

Parents, today more than ever, need clear and specific goals and plans for their families. We need an offense good enough that we’re not forced to constantly react and to rely always on our defense. We decided that the best plan was an organized and deliberate way to teach children the values that would protect them and maximize their chance for happiness. In researching and writing our New York Times #1 Bestseller Teaching Your Children Values we sought twelve values, one for each month of the year, that were truly universal, that virtually every parent everywhere would desire for their child and that, together, would create the kind of character in a child that would maximize his chance for a happy and productive life. We surveyed and questioned parents and came up with this list:

January: Honesty
February: Courage
March: Peaceability
April: Self-reliance and Potential
May: Self-discipline and Moderation
June: Fidelity and Chastity
July: Loyalty and Dependability
August: Respect
September: Love
October: Unselfishness and Sensitivity
November: Kindness and Friendliness
December: Justice and Mercy

Once the book was done, as you ValuesParenting members know, we rearranged the list a bit and developed the Alexander’s Amazing Adventures program for total focus on one value per month. This special program of twelve monthly audio sets makes it easy. Each set (one for each value) contains a parents segment of methods, stories, games, and other ideas to teach that value to different age children and a child’s segment where kids learn the value vicariously via an imaginative and musical adventure story.

As we were developing the book and the program, we realized that there are all kinds of simple and effective methods, techniques, stories, games, and other ideas to teach each of these values to kids, but the most important and overriding method is simply to focus and concentrate on one single value each month . . . to make it the “value of the month” in your family and to look for opportunities (in everything from the media you watch to the everyday situations you find yourself in) to talk about it and to point it out to your child. Assign one value to each month and when the year ends, start over. (your eight-year-old is now nine and will learn each value on a new level).

Properly approached, this “values offense” is not some burden of “one more thing to worry about.” Quite the contrary, it’s a simplifier. It gives a parent one clear subject to concentrate on for the month rather than worrying about everything at once. It’s not a panacea, and it’s not something that has to be worked on every moment, but when you get an opportunity, when you find yourself with a child in the car or in the kitchen, you mention the value, you work on it with them. You comment on your own need for the value, and on how much it means to you, and the effect is cumulative — a little better each month — a little better each year, building a base of shared and understood values that become a lifetime defense against the false values that threaten to swallow up our children and our families.

The bottom line is that children do not learn values or develop character by osmosis; they do so through the deliberate efforts and example of their parents.

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