How to raise a child with Good Character

We all know that we want our children, and ourselves, to have good character, right?

But how do we actually go about doing this? “Good character” seems like such an abstract term, how do we make it concrete, and how do we motivate children to achieve it? I’m still striving to achieve good character for myself and my children (I feel like this will be a lifelong journey), but in my search to cultivate good character I’ve realised a number of things that can be rather helpful in pursuing good character. I’m going to share them in this article, inshallah (God willing).

What is “good character”?

First of all – let’s break down what “good character” actually means.

If I were to describe someone who has good character, I might describe them as “honest”, “generous”, “trustworthy”, “kind” etc.

But what defines these things? How does someone get to be seen as honest or generous etc.

It boils down to their actions.

An honest person is a person who tells the truth. A generous person is a person who gives things away.

But it’s not just performing these actions once or twice. It’s about performing these actions consistently.

And do you know what consistent actions are? They’re called habits.

So a person who has the good character trait of honesty is someone who has the habit of telling the truth. A person who has the good character trait of generosity is someone who has the habit of giving away to others.  

How do we cultivate good character?

If we can understand that good character traits are defined by habits then it’s easy to see that in order to develop good character we need to develop good habits.

There’s a lot of science behind formulating and maintaining habits (I’m quite fascinated by it), but one thing is certain, if you develop a habit earlier on in life, it becomes easier to maintain throughout your life.

As parents, we have the advantage of helping our children cultivate good habits from young – and in this way we can guide them towards good character.

How to motivate children to do good actions consistently

Cultivating good habits and good character in children shouldn’t be a secret mission that parents have, our children should know that this is a goal for them and for ourselves too.

One of the best ways of explaining to kids why they should desire to pursue good character comes from Imam Al Ghazali. I learnt the explanation below from the Al Ghazali Children’s Project Book of Knowledge, and it can be taught to even really young children. Your conversation would go something like this:

“Do you know that you have TWO hearts? A physical heart that pumps blood and an invisible heart (the soul)!

And did you know there are two worlds? This world which is temporary, we will only be here for a short time, and the next world which is FOREVER! In the next world we can have whatever we want!

Do you know that we won’t be able to take things from this world into the next world…EXCEPT for your invisible heart!

And did you know you can SHINE your invisible heart? Some actions that we do can put dust on our invisible hearts (things like lying and stealing), and some actions can polish our invisible hearts (things like remembering God, being kind to others, telling the truth).

Let’s spend this life doing good actions to polish our invisible hearts so we can take SHINY hearts with us to the next world!”

Making good character a lifelong and family goal

Having the above conversation once isn’t enough though, as a parent you can do a couple of things to really cement your child’s understanding and development of good character:

1. Have this conversation regularly and bring the concepts into your daily lives (can you polish your heart by helping mom set table for supper tonight please?)

2. Talk and learn as much about Jannah (Heaven) as you can! The greater your child’s desire to get to Jannah, the stronger their motivation will be. [Inshallah (God willing) I will do another post on some of the resources we’ve used to learn about Jannah.]

3. Tell your children stories about people who do good deeds and have good character. Tell them the stories of the Prophets (peace be upon them) to give them good role models.

4. Strive to have good character yourself. Our children emulate what we do as parents, we can be the greatest “influencer” in their lives.

5. Seek out and cultivate good company for your children, company who strive to have good character too.

6. Limit exposure to tv shows, movies, books and social media that promote bad values.

Conclusion

What I’ve laid out above – it’s pretty simple:

Good habits = Good character.

Good habits = shiny hearts = good character.

But just because something is easy in theory, doesn’t mean it is easy to do in practice. Good character isn’t something that is just going to develop, we need to be aware and intentional about the environment we create and the habits we encourage and discourage.

May God grant us and our children good character!

If you’ve used the tips in this post or have other advice on raising children with good character, please leave a comment below!