Tagged: “Forgiveness Education”

I think that offenses against children are the worst because they are innocent persons who could carry their hurt into adulthood, compromising health and relationships. How can we go about helping children to forgive if they have not yet had serious unfairness against them?

We have teacher guides for forgiveness education in which the teacher gives the forgiveness instruction through stories.  As children and adolescents see how story characters resolve conflicts and do the inner transformation of forgiveness, then they have models of how to forgive.  It is important that students are not pressured to forgive, but are drawn to it if they wish to try it.

For additional information, see Forgiveness Education Curriculum Guides.

Is forgiveness so natural that we can go ahead even if we were raised by parents who were indifferent to forgiveness or even talked against it?

I do not see forgiveness as a natural part of our humanity, at least for the majority of us. To forgive requires effort and patience and practice. We are affected by what we learn about it, by observing others’ attitudes toward forgiveness, and by the models we have of people who forgive or who do not forgive. One issue to note is this: If parents insist that children forgive and that the other say, “Sorry,” then the process can become too mechanical without the depth of knowing what forgiveness is or appreciating it on a deep level. Forgiveness education is important if a child will learn well how to forgive.

For additional information: Teaching Kids About Forgiveness.

I notice your interest in forgiveness education.  If others such as myself were interested in starting forgiveness education in our own area of the world, what would be some of your key suggestions?

Anyone can help to start forgiveness education in their own community. If you visit our Store section of this website, you will see that we have professionally-produced curriculum guides for teachers from pre-kindergarten (age 4) through grade 12 (using United States language here) (grade 12 includes students at age 17-18).  We also have an anti-bullying guide for middle school and high school.  These guides can be used effectively by teachers who are motivated to spend up to one hour a week for about 12-17 weeks instructing students.  Each teacher guide (up to high school) uses stories (many by Dr. Seuss) that are appropriate for the grade level.  If the books that are recommended in each guide are too expensive, we have professionally-produced book summaries of each one.  The summaries are about 2-3 pages long and get at the gist of the stories (as far as forgiveness is concerned).

In impoverished and conflict-zones of the world, we give all of the above materials away for free—no charge and no hidden costs.  For others, we ask that they purchase the materials so we can continue serving contentious regions of the world.

You also can access teacher evaluations of these programs in the Education section of the website and you will see that teachers are very favorable to these programs.

Consider taking courage in hand and bringing a sample of the teacher guides to a local school (along with the teacher-evaluation information and perhaps the Basic Description of the Guides). Tell the principal or teacher about the objective of forgiveness education: to help children grown in the virtues of love, mercy, and forgiveness, which can reduce student anger and increase academic achievement. Tell the principal or teacher that we provide free materials (if they are in an impoverished or contentious region).

For additional information, see Forgiveness Education: Curriculum.

As a follow-up question, let us suppose that children as young as 10-years-old have learned about forgiveness and want to practice it.  How can they go about forgiving a parent if that parent keeps offending?

This will depend on the severity of the injustice.  If there is abuse, it would be my hope that this will be discovered by professionals in the child’s school.  Such abuse often leads to observable effects in children such as inattention during schoolwork, aggressive acting out in school, poor grades, and anger or depressive mood.  The child needs justice along with forgiving.  The forgiving in this case likely would begin only after the child is in a safe place.  If the injustice is not so severe as to require a solution from outside the home, the child could start forgiving by: a) acknowledging anger.  This can be difficult because of loyalty to the parent; and b) seeing the inherent worth in people in general and then applying it to the parent.

Many children are very good at exclaiming: “That’s not fair” and if a child is schooled in the moral virtue of forgiveness, which includes schooling in fair treatment, this kind of proclamation, spoken from a forgiving heart, may aid parents in thinking through their own behavior.  This kind of pattern is not easy to solve and so, again, I recommend forgiveness education in schools to equip children with the tools for overcoming disappointments and anger caused by truly unfair treatment against them.

For additional information: Teaching Kids About Forgiveness.

Can children forgive a parent while they are still young and living with the parent?

In my experience, because forgiveness is so little discussed with children, as least in any deep way, most children actually do not think about forgiveness and they do not know how to go about forgiving.  This is one reason why instituting forgiveness education is so vitally important.   Again in my experience, children who are treated unjustly in the home do not begin to reflect on this until they are in later adolescence and are in transition from the home.  It often is at this time that the nearly-adult children look back and can be filled with deep resentment in need of amelioration.  If these nearly-adult children already were fortified with what forgiveness is and how to go about it, this would serve them well.

For additional information, see Kids Are Smarter Than You Think.