Raising Good Children

Book excerpt: Raising decent, caring, and responsible children is the most complex and challenging job in every parent’s life—and an increasingly difficult one in today’s society. Here is the most authoritative book available on this crucial subject, a valuable and sensitive guide for parents who want their children to grow up with lifelong positive values. Based on fascinating research, this groundbreaking work by psychologist and educator Dr. Thomas Lickona describes the predictable stages of moral development from birth to adulthood. And it offers you down-to-earth advice and guidance for each stage: • Seven caring ways to discipline “terrible twos” • Why your preschooler “lies” and how to handle it • What to do about a four-year-old’s back talk • How to handle your seven-year-old’s endless negotiations about what’s “fair” • Why teens have trouble with peer pressure—and how to help them • How to talk to your child about drugs, drinking, and sex • How to help children of any age reason more clearly about what’s right and wrong PLUS . . . A list of more than one hundred children’s books that teach moral values, and much more. “An excellent book on a vastly neglected aspect of raising children.”—Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson, author How to Parent, How to Father “We have been waiting for a book like this for a long time—a readable work that translates a moral development into parents’ language and experience.”—Dolores Curran, author of Traits of a Healthy Family “Truly integrates a moral development theory into a consistent approach to childrearing. . . Word-of-mouth recommendations from parent to parent may lift it to the level of popularity once held by Dr. Spock’s book on child care.”—Moral Education Forum