"Bringing Up Moral Children" by A. Lynn Scoresby

This post is about the importance of teaching our children morality. After my husband and I had been parenting for quite a few years, we realized that we didn't know what we were doing. We realized that we needed help. We searched and read, prayed and read some more. Finally we came across a most amazing book that changed our lives, and I am sure it changed the lives of our children for the better.

I am telling you all this because of all the books that my husband read, by far the best book was, "Bringing Up Moral Children" by A. Lynn Scoresby.  It is an amazing book and we used it all the time. We still use the principles in our everyday dealings with people, and of course, with our children and grandchildren.

In the book, Dr. Scoresby teaches how to teach morality to our children using principles. We learned the principles first and then we could teach them and incorporate them into our everyday lives. One story that had a huge impact on me was about a boy, I will say he was about 12 years old. This boy had been getting to class late and this was becoming a real problem. The parents had a talk with the boy and they worked out a plan so that he could get to class on time. In order to get to class on time the boy would have to go a different route to his class. He would have to go a back way around some buildings that weren't as crowded as the way he had been going to class. The plan worked and he had gotten to class on time a number of times. One day as he was going this back way, he saw a boy being bullied. He had to decide if he should stop, help the boy and be late, or go on, not help the boy and make sure that he wasn't late to class. (This is my version of the story. Sorry, Dr. Scoresby, if this isn't exactly right.) The boy did the right thing, he stopped and helped the boy being bullied. He was late to class. He got into trouble from his teacher for being late. But when he told his parents that he had been late to class and why he had done what he did, they praised him for his correct choice. (Note, the boy was still in trouble for being late to class. There was a seemingly bad consequence even for this correct choice. I will talk about this more in the next post.)

As I have been telling my version of Dr. Scoresby's story, I noticed how the parents talk to the child. They talked to him and helped him come up with a plan to make it to class on time. They took the time to hear their son explain why he had been late on the day he helped the other boy. It then became a perfect teaching moment. Had they not talked and worked out solutions together, this might not have had a good outcome. The parents might have seen the report from the teacher about their son being late to class, gotten angry and grounded him. I learned from the book that you take opportunities to teach your children. Always be looking for opportunities to teach. Natural consequences for behavior teach very well, but you need to talk to the child so that the child understands that their decision caused the consequence. That is just one of the many things I took away from that great book.

I could talk about "Bring Up Moral Children" all day, but I need to get to the quote of the day from "A World Without Heroes."
"Sarti is right. The moral relativism that saturates modern thought can produce neither heroes nor happiness. 'A man who bows down to nothing,' Dostoevsky observed, 'can never bear the burden of himself.' So too with nations. No civilization has ever arisen except on a religious basis, and none can maintain itself except as it is informed by absolute morality. It is faith held in common that civilizes, that holds men's animal self-interest at bay, and shapes a just law and community. Such freedom and security as we still enjoy are readily traced to the Judeo-Christian foundations of the West. But the central faith must be constantly guarded and renewed, not least by heroism, lest the bonds between men dissolve....The hero bespeaks these facts. He emerges only in that healthy community based on an objective moral order, and he in turn, by deed and symbol, replenishes its spiritual strength. We cannot evoke or even recognize heroism without a common faith."
"The absent hero is thus a symptom of a paralyzing moral division in America. If our knight rode out and slew a dragon, half the editorials the next day would brand him 'insensitive' if not an outright warmonger, and remind us that dragons are on the endangered species list. If we cannot agree that dragons are evil we will have no dragon fighters. Unhappy the country that loses its moral bearings!"
"A World Without Heroes," pages 7-8.

I wish "Bringing Up Moral Children" were still in print!