Young children are like clay – it is the best age for shaping their minds and characters. Besides some essential motor skills they need for attending preschool, there are also some important values to teach them. You need to show them the values you want to teach them with your own behaviour. Also, you need to be very patient, persistent, and tolerant when it comes to kids. If you teach your children the right values at this young age, you contribute to their academic and general success in life. Keep reading to learn more about the 8 essential values to teach your preschool kids.

First things first, you need to teach your kids some manners, this is very important. Then, you want also to teach them honesty and responsibility. Among the values to teach your kids, there are also respect and consideration. You should also do your best to teach them the importance of perseverance and forgiveness. Moreover, gratitude is another key skill you should teach your kids. By being aware and possessing these skills, you make life easier for your kids.

1. Manners

One of the first things you want to teach your kids is manners. When kids have good manners, they are much more likely to interact with other children and people in a more thoughtful and polite way. It is no secret that kids imitate their parents and copy whatever they do. So, if you want to teach your kids good manners, you need to have and display them. Having good manners starts with simple things, such as saying hello and goodbye to people, saying thank you, please, and sorry. A good time to start highlighting expressing manners is from the moment they are born – even when they are babies, they just listen and observe you. In that way, they will start imitating you as they grow older and develop. 

This is a good way to prepare them for attending preschool. In early childhood education institutions, such as Insight Early Learning, the focus is on practising these manners on a daily basis, among other things.

2. Honesty

Another crucial value you should teach your kids is honesty. If you want your kids to be honest and to understand the importance of honesty, you should be honest yourself. Even though they are quite young and it doesn’t seem so perhaps, children are very perceptive and observant of your behaviours. So, if they see you lying, they will also consider it okay to lie. On the other hand, if you catch your child lying, you should sit them down and try explaining to them why it’s wrong to lie. Try to be calm and not overreact, as then children can perhaps get the wrong message or focus on something other than the issue being discussed. Moreover, when you notice your child being honest, use the opportunity to express how proud you are of them. Don’t forget to pit out the good things.

3. Responsibility

Moving further one with essential values to teach your kids – the next one is responsibility. It is among the top key values you should strive to teach your kids. You want your child to be accountable, and responsible and to keep committed. It is quintessential to instill this value as early as possible because if you don’t do that, kids will have a harder time in the future. The world is in need of responsible people. Children can exhibit responsible as soon as they start attending school. They are responsible for carrying their books and notebooks, doing homework, preparing for tests, and so on. Later on, that responsibility extends to finishing college and finding a good job. Essentially, it is a skill we need throughout our whole life.

4. Respect

Furthermore, what you also want to teach your child is respect. Children best learn this value by observing how you respect other people in your surroundings. This refers to all the people, including the elders, but others as well. It’s important to teach your children that they should respect everybody regardless of their age, status, religion, or race. By being respectful, they are kind and thoughtful to strangers they interact with every day.

5. Consideration

Being considerate towards others is yet another value that you shouldn’t overlook. It is nice when you see your children being thoughtful and polite to other children and adults. However, it might also be challenging to teach this particular value. You should know your children well and observe how they interact with other children. In that way, you can notice some behaviour that you perhaps want to correct as it is not the right way. When kids are kind and thoughtful they can understand other people better as well as be aware of their feelings.

6. Perseverance

Depending on your children’s character set, they might get angry and give up quickly when they can’t accomplish something in the way they imagined it. This is difficult to change, but with a lot of talking (and I mean, A LOT), you can get them to try and act differently. You want to teach them that not everything goes by plan always in life, but that the point is never to give up. Rather, they should try harder until they accomplish what they intended. 

7. Forgiveness

To avoid your children growing up to be bitter, you should also teach them to forgive and be compassionate. Everybody acts in a bad way sometimes, either intentionally or not, and that is a normal occurrence. You should try to explain this to your kids and say how important it is to forgive them. They should grow up to be compassionate instead of holding a grudge. Your goal is to raise children that grow up to be happy adults rather than resentful and bitter ones.

8. Gratitude

In these modern times, people are often ungrateful. To prevent your children from being such, you should teach them to value all the things they have in life. They should turn to positive things rather than negative ones. In order for this to work, you should start with yourself – are you grateful? As we already mentioned, kids see and notice everything, so if you act ungrateful, they will, too. If you are indeed ungrateful, work on changing that. Your kids will follow along.

Conclusion

There are so many things we want to teach our children and prepare them for the tough world out there. Take small steps and teach them these simple and useful values, for starters. You can teach them valuable things in every period of their lives. 

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