Parenting for Character: Teaching Justice and Compassion (3)

Context
The virtue of justice, as it can be applied to children, has three applications: being just toward yourself, being just toward your responsibilities, and being just toward others. The order is important. In my previous three blogs on the topic of justice, I addressed justice toward self, justice toward responsibilities, and justice as it relates to compassion.

To say that an individual is being just toward himself, we mean that he makes himself accountable to himself for the person he is becoming. Furthermore, to say an individual is just toward his responsibilities, we are saying he holds himself accountable to the tasks and everyday duties required by the world he lives in: his home, his school, his recreational pursuits.

This background frames our understanding of justice towards others. Justice toward others is built upon personal responsibilities that make the practice of justice towards others noble and effective.

Just Toward Others
Research and cultural history agree: People need people. People want to be loved and they want to love others. They want to have friends and be a friend. They want to help others and, in times of need, they also want to be helped.

Healthy, productive relationships is a human need. Children don’t need to be taught this fact. They know it. Yet for children to have good relationships, conditions must be met. This is where we apply the language of virtue: children need to learn how to be “just toward others.” This justice defines those behaviors and attitudes that will build and strengthen relationships.

At the root of any good relationship is the practice of self-sacrifice for the benefit of another. Because healthy, productive human relationships exist for mutual benefit, they are grounded in the give-and-take of a relationship. In fact, they become stronger and more mutually beneficial when the giving outweighs the taking. If a child wants to be positively related to family members, peers, classmates, or teammates, he must sacrifice something of his selfinterest to the benefit of another.

There are two categories of social relationships. The first is one-toone, face-to-face, friend-to-friend, colleague-to-colleague, familymember-to-family-member. Second are relationships between an individual and various social groups or social institutions, for example, a child’s relationship to the family at large, to a peer group, a school classroom, a sports team, or other organized social groups.

Concerning one-on-one relationships, the practice of self-sacrifice can be summarized in the adage, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That is, before behaving and acting, consider the needs of another person. Set your self-interest aside, and do what is best. Simple thought, but profound and universally applicable.

As children enter the age of reason, about age five or six, their perspective on social relationships require a cataclysmic adjustment (at least in their minds). If their parents understand the foundation of social relationships, they will no longer permit their son or daughter to be the unique center of the universe. It is time to learn the give-and-take of true relationships. To get love, you need to give love. If you wish to have friends, you must be a friend. To gain respect you must respect others. To be appreciated, you must appreciate others. It is really quite simple, but the demands are shocking to a little boy or girl who has grown accustomed to having their every need met by mommy and daddy. Yet, if parents don’t help their son or daughter learn these lessons of human relationships, they will have done a very great disservice to the development and socialization of their child. In the name of loving their child, they will have nurtured a lonely, maladjusted, self-centered, disrespectful, soon-to-have-serious-adolescent-psychological-problems, young man or woman.

For children to cultivate and enjoy a rich and rewarding social life, they will need to know and understand what they owe others just as often as they declare what others owe them. They can begin admonishing themselves, “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” This is the beginning of learning to be “just toward others.”

From Dec 2017/Jan 2018 Birchwood School of Hawken Clipboard