How would you define integrity???
To me that would mean that the person, business, words, actions are not going to let you down
There are no false promises
They stand by their word
There is 100% reliability
It is a sincere and honest dependency that is pure and complete
Once lost it is very hard to get it back
You cannot have integrity without respect. Equally you cannot be respected without integrity
How do we teach our children about integrity?
We can pay attention and listen to our childs thoughts on what is important to them, what values they think are important. Teach them what values are important to you.
Such as good manners, we teach our child from the beginning to have good manners and remember to say "please' and 'thankyou'
So as we taught them manners, take the same time to teach them the basic and fundamental elements of integrity, which are:
HONESTY, TRUSTWORTHINESS and RESPECT
HONESTY
In all things teach our child to be honest. teach them to own up to their mistakes, accept responsibility for their actions, deal themselves with any repercussions.
Not to tell any lies
Use Honesty as a basis for life but not to be used as a tell tale
Never to fake their feelings or emotions
Be honest to whatever their thoughts to any given situation
Encourage our child to discuss any problems in an honest fashion and not to mask any confusions they have
TRUSTWORTHINESS
Teach our child to be someone who can be trusted
Equally teach them to be careful who they trust
After all there are a lot of people who don't know how to spell integrity let alone understand it!!!!
Educate our child on proving their trustworthiness by only making promises they can keep
Show our child by our own actions that if we have made arrangements that we cant keep to, we plan ahead and let the other party know, so we aren't letting people down.
As always children learn qualities such as Trustworthiness by watching adults not by listening to them!!!!
RESPECT
Respect is such an important quality to teach
We can teach them to be respectful of toys, other peoples belongings, other peoples homes and definitely other peoples feelings
We educate our child to be respectful of other members of the home, from the parents right the way through to the pets
if we teach our child well about Respect, then our child will grow into being a comforter.
Someone others can turn to
The comforter in the playground is the child who looks after another who is upset or being bullied
My boys are football mad, the house rules are though that I do not allow any ball games into the house. The boys have had to learn to respect this rule and my home or lose the ball !!!!
The combination of teaching our children Honesty, Trustworthiness and Respect has a great reward.
We will one day see a child transform to a person of Integrity who is respected by all
(December 2007) (
