The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It's important to show children love, affection and balance and invest time in their moral upbringing.
In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.
Children often have a much stronger concept of morality than adults.
Kids can sniff out a moral. They can feel the heavy hand of an adult.
Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other's encroachments.
It's really important for children to have good morals and good manners, and that they're thoughtful of other people and that they learn the consequences of their actions.
It requires more strength to be gentle, so it's the everyday encounters of life that I think we've prepared children for and prepared them to be good to other people and to consider other people.
Having toddlers always means that there's a fair amount of chaos at home, but that's part of the fun.
The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person.