In our results-driven Singapore society, academics excellence is always the top priority on parents’ minds as it is believed that future career success is tied mainly to academic results. In fact, this is evident in the number of tuition classes parents have enrolled their children in and they have no qualms to splash out on extra lessons just to improve their grades.
In addition, in our fast-paced world, most of the working parents are so busy with work that they may have overlooked certain things in life that deserve more attention when raising their children.
Yes. I am referring to family values that parents tend to forget in our modern life because of their hectic schedules. The term “family values” usually refers to positive character traits such as compassion, honesty, respect, responsibility, kindness and perseverance.
Family values differ from family to family worldwide and teaching your children family values is considered one of the most important responsibilities you have as parents. The kind of values that our children have will deeply influence their behaviours, attitudes and outlook in life.
So let us take a look at the below pointers on why values are so important in parenting.
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Build a stronger family bond
By having common family values with your children, it naturally reinforces the sense of belonging and security within the family, which also happens to strengthen the bond between you and your children.
As more children turn to their peers or social media for support, they somehow forget how a family should come first so it is essential for a child to get educated in family values. With common values, it basically holds the family together like glue and your children will always be aware that they can get full support from you when they encounter any problems or setbacks in life.
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Learn valuable lessons in life
For our children to succeed in life, they need to understand academics excellence or intelligence alone is not the only pathway to future success. Values like perseverance and resilience can teach your children to handle stress and take failure well.
This is extremely important as there are students who dwell on their failure to meet their own expectations and eventually fall into the deep hole of depression. This negative outcome can be avoided if they are inculcated these positive values from young.
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Understand and accept every person is different
By teaching our children the values of respect and empathy, they will put themselves in other people’s shoes and take their feelings into consideration without prejudice and discrimination. This teaches our children the virtue of treating everybody fairly with respect and not only focus on personal gains and achievements.
More importantly, parents need to be a role model and lead by example as children are constantly watching your every move. For example, if someone cuts into your lane abruptly and instead of blowing your top, you need to remain calm and explain to your children that “That guy may be in a hurry to attend an urgent matter or he may be on his way to handle an emergency.” This response indirectly educates your children’s mind to always have empathetic thoughts instead of reacting negatively.
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Improve relationship and Create a better world
Teaching your children at an early age how to be kind towards others is an important part of raising them to be ready for school and help them develop strong social-emotional skills.
When parents nurture important values like kindness in their children, it creates a positive aura around them that works like a magnet and makes others like to mingle with them and spread their kindness. Work with your children to come up with acts of kindness to do such as helping someone in need, saying something nice and positive to others sharing toys or involving them in a donation drive. Not only will it help him grow into a happy and loving person but also make the world a much better place to live in. Mark Twain is absolutely right when he said kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
In essence, every parent needs to think about what traits your family values most and implement them as your family core values for your children to follow so that they can act on these values in their lives.
