TELL ME! "RESPONSIBILITY"

Dealing with other people, feeling at ease in a group, determination, steadfastness, consideration and empathy – all these capabilities are part of people’s social development. They are capabilities which are not fully developed at birth and they have to be learned in a longterm, ongoing process.

Every day, children encounter the notion that there are rules and guidelines for deciding what is right and wrong, what is good and bad. In this they are influenced by their social environment, but first and foremost by their parents and grandparents. Children observe what is of “value” to the people around them, and learn how they themselves should behave.

Society and tradition provide generally valid, binding rules; however, values are also subjective – something which is an ‘iron rule’ in one family may not have priority in another. Honesty, reliability, decency, courage, helpfulness, a sense of responsibility, fairness – whatever values and virtues are defined as being important, they have one thing in common: for them to be credibly transmitted to a child, the child has to see them being lived. Because children learn from example.