Moral Development In Children

The main focus of Moral Development is the change in the emergence, and understanding of morality from childhood to adulthood. Morality develops through a lifetime and is influenced by an individual experience and behavior when faced the issues related to morality. Morality concerns an individual growing sense of what is wrong and right, this is the reason why the young generation has different types of judgment because they all have a different sense of morality. During early childhood, children grow in their ability to tell the difference between moral rules, social norms, and personal choices.

By the age of 5, children understand the moral rules of social norms. Social norms are the set of rules about socially defined behaviors that are wrong or right, they understand that if they hurt someone by hitting them it is violating the rules of social norms. By the age of 6 and 7, the ability to understand social norms, moral rules, and personal choices matures they start understanding them better. They start thinking about the ramifications of different behaviour like they know that copying something from other’s is not right. For Example, a Child understands that if their parents are doing something serious work it is not okay to irritate them, or doing giggling and tickling will be inappropriate. In Moral Development there is a preoperational stage where the young one starts to understand that they have the choice between right and wrong in a tempting situation like when their parents tell them that no cookies before dinner and they see the plate in front of them before dinner, they are capable of deciding whether it would be right or wrong. And the choice of making their own decision leads to more self-control. Moral ability can also be cultivated through positive discipline. Parents have the most important role in making their children well-disciplined
. Parents have to make sure that they highlight the good choices and bad choices without labeling them to their children. Some moral development is passed by verbal stories such as classroom teaching, stories related to morals, and external factors like social gatherings and environmental things, Morality developed more through external factors by seeing what others are doing, making them capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong.

Moral Development is the sense of living in a well-mannered or in well-behavioural way which can lead to a beautiful and disciplined life.

By: Renu