Raising Ethical Children and Teens
The development of character virtues and moral reasoning skills impacts all aspects of young people’s lives, including academic success, mental and physical health, and social relationships. This course aims to promote understanding of the ethical issues that children and teens grapple with. It is appropriate for parents, counselors, tutors, and mentors, who need practical information about how to best promote ethical decision-making and behavior.
Module 1: What is Ethical Development and Why is it important?
This module will define ethical development and cover the stages of ethical development from early childhood to adulthood. It will include a discussion of the relationship between ethical behavior and social and emotional learning.
Module 2: What does it mean to develop a moral commitment?
This module focuses on helping children and teens integrate moral commitment into their self-perceptions.
Module 3: What is moral courage?
In this module, you will learn about the reading comprehension activities included in the CBL lesson plans. Watch a video about the CBL READ phase. The video was prepared by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (3:14 minutes).
Module 4: Why do children and teen lie?
This module will discuss the risks of telling lies and withholding the truth from parents. The unit includes strategies for building trust, truthfulness, and openness.
Module 5: What is Digital Literacy?
This unit will cover topics in responsible internet use and information sharing online. It will offer strategies for teaching children and teens to better regulate their online actions.
Module 6: What should parents know about cyberbullying?
This module describes the multiple facets of bullying in cyberspace and its effects on children's and teens’ physical and mental health and online reputation. It offers strategies for protecting children and teens and discouraging participation in harmful online actions.
Module 7: What is resilience?
This module discusses individual, family, and community resilience. It offers concrete suggestions for building family resilience and individual resilience. The unit discusses sense of purpose and self-regulation as essential parts of building resilience.
Module 8: How can we foster empathy in children and teens?
This module will review definitions of empathy and present an empathy development framework. It includes a discussion of the effects of parents, teachers, and peers on empathy.
Module 9: How can we teach ethics with stories?
This module will discuss the benefits of using stories to promote ethical decision-making. It will include a discussion of different media and genres and the cognitive, social, and emotional skills that children and teens acquire from interacting with stories.
Module 10: What is the relationship between self-regulation and ethical thinking?
This module will discuss the reciprocal relationships between self-regulation and virtues ethics. It includes a discussion of emotion and mood regulation as well as the importance of meta-cognitive and meta-ethical reflection.