I came across this article and was reminded how much I admire dignity and character in a person. These are ephemeral qualities, hard to describe or measure, but easy to recognize. The question arises, can these qualities be cultivated? Can I do something now so that my children grow up to be dignified adults with character?
As suggested in the article, George Washington sought to change external habits to “shape inner morals”. Certain acts define graciousness or dignity, and a place to start would be to ensure my children always do them whether they want to or not; simple things such as greeting people, and saying proper goodbyes.
The other aspect of dignity is mysteriousness, or rather restraint in what personal information you reveal to others. In this age of Facebook, when all our friends are intent on telling us everything from what they ate for lunch to what Crayola Crayon they are, restraint seems like a much harder thing to teach kids to value. Add to that our pop-culture where the society is obsessed with the worst of people, and value of dignity becomes even harder to teach. After all, the people who acted insanely during the health-care reform town-hall meetings got to come on TV and express their opinions, whereas nobody noticed the people who asked reasonable questions.
The other problem the ubiquity of so called “real people”, with the help of TV and other media, creates the feeling that it is fine to behave in an undignified manner because others are doing it too. Milgram proved with his social experiments that people are capable of doing nasty things just because other people are doing them as well. The way current pop-culture is going, there are no good role models left for children. Maybe the thing to do is to actively cultivate friendship with the type of people that can be good role models for my kids. Then they can do what the “crowd” does.
As far as building character goes, a major contributing factor is hardship in childhood. In comfortable middle-class families like ours, hardship is hard to come by. What parent wants to deliberately put their kids through hardship? As a friend said, “it is crazy that you are worried about lack of lack”. The other ingredient for character seems to be strict discipline. Discipline is a hardship, in the sense that kids aren’t allowed to just do what they want. We parents however are overloaded with too much information about how to achieve discipline. Should the children be paid for doing chores? If punishing for bad behavior too negative, then isn’t rewarding for good behavior same as bribing? How much praise is too much?
What is a parent to do?
Raising kids in a non-native environment while constantly worrying about striking the right balance.
