Children exhibit moral behavior, but are not morally praisworthy for it.

Thank you for the debate Tarzan, this should be rather interesting indeed. Furthermore thank you all voters and observers, comments are always highly appreciated. But, PLEASE, no arguments in the comment sections by spectators. Having said this let's do a bit of debate. The main tenants behind the majority of my opponents arguments are very well thought out indeed, however there are a few holes, and those holes will unfortunately be costing the round. The first hole that needs to be addressed is obviously the age. My opponent decides arbitrarily in the comment section that the age for a child is circa 7. I believe there to be some fundamental problems with this arbitrary magical number of seven. I'm rather uncertain on many levels that many adults ever develop the moral distinction that my opponent speaks of. In fact I'm willing to say that many adults never do and actually in some cases go the opposite direction. It seems apparent that many adults actually base their morality very solely on what appears to be societally acceptable and in many cases my never actually think through the true morality about it. In fact if we look back through history we can see a multitude of scenarios that support this concept. For instance the church is a great method of control that lays out an entire moral doctrine. A doctrine that in many cases some never even consider. A secondary and possibly even more distinct examples comes from government in general. Government became a necessity at the point where many people never bothered to make their own moral distinctions and had to be told what to do instead. These however a secondary points. The main problem with the resolution as stands is the line, "but are not morally praiseworthy for it." I think we can look back to both of the above scenarios and see that moral praise probably does very little for the people who do not know why they hold the morals that they do. However it does accomplish one thing, that being perpetuating the moral action in the future. At the end of this round if nothing else we're at the very least going to see this good effect from moral praise. But more importantly we see severe disadvantages from a lack of moral praise. Looking specifically to my opponents two situations we have two paths that we can tread. On one hand we could stick with my opponent and say that they are not morally praiseworthy and thus never praise them. Sadly this results in the individual never knowing if their actions are moral or not. Furthermore without the information on whether their actions are moral or not they never come to a point where they can decide for themselves. Finally though, and down the other path. If we praise a child for their moral action then at the very least we reinforce the fact that the action is moral. This allows two things. On one hand we contribute our opinion on what is moral or immoral into a given situation and allow the child multiple perspectives. But more importantly, and especially prevalent when the child doesn't agree with what we say, we see critical evaluation on the child's part. Critical evaluation of what is moral or not moral is the first step in developing the moral distinction my opponent speaks of. Having realized all of the above I can see no scenario why their actions would not be morally praiseworthy. On the contrary, I see a great deal of worth in praising them for their actions.