The education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart. Christian character formation begins at birth with physical and emotional parent-child bonding, and it develops in stages. It requires parents to intentionally and incidentally attend to the emotional growth of their children and to the development of reasoning abilities within their children. In his book Raising Good Children, Thomas Lickona provides clear blueprints to help parents identify and understand each stage of moral development, know reasonable developmental expectations for a child of normal intelligence growing up in a supportive moral environment, and understand how to relate to children at each stage of growth in such a way as to further the development of Christian character. Parents and teachers would benefit from reading this book.
Moral development is foundational to conscience formation.
A person whose decisions are based on clarified convictions informed by intelligent reasoning and wisdom sources will develop a soul characterized by care, compassion, and a willingness to accept the consequences of his choices and conscience. To support parents in their efforts to weave the fabric of Christian character in their children, Today's Catholic Teacher offers the Parent Partnership Handbook. The Handbook consists of removable and reproducible pages suitable for distribution to parents. Each issue will offer parent-friendly explanations and concrete parent practices. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children.