building MQ (Moral Intelligence) in our children..

Last Saturday, we went to the boy's child care center to have our bi-annual "Parent Teacher Conference" with Rynus' teachers. I realized I didn't blog about it during our mid year conversation but I mentioned in a post back in Dec 2014, which was a year ago and here's what I wrote:
School life:
We had a nice conversation with his teachers during the "meet parents session" last week. Rynus has fully adapted to school environment. Although he doesn't follow instructions all the time, has short attention span, is rather picky on food and often throws tantrums when things don't go his way (sounds like his korkor? Quite!), he still managed to "survive" well for the past 4 months. And his teacher was rather impressed with his enthusiasm with learning alphabets and numbers (sounds like his korkor? Absolutely!).


And this time, we were greeted by 2 enthusiastic teachers who couldn't stop praising Rynus on his progress in school, yes you read that right! They pretty much had NO COMPLAINT about our little boy. In all honesty, we were not caught by surprise at all with all the positive feedback from his teachers, because we know our boys well and their consistency level in behaviors can pretty much compete with your experience ordering a happy meal at MacDonald's, same quality, same taste and same service, anywhere, anytime! So they are expected to behave the same way both in school and at home, as long as their emotional health is not challenged by any unforeseen circumstances.

In a nutshell, Rynus progressed extremely well academically, he has long attention span during lessons now and loves to answer questions. He proudly shared his dream with his teacher and fellow friends in class. He wants to be a teacher when he grows up, and during free play time, he even gathered his friends to the "sight words wall" and started teaching them to read! He's extremely independent and refuses to get help from teachers, yes no one is "allowed" to feed him or dress him up as he loves to do that those things by himself. He's sociable and enjoys talking to his teacher and friends. If there's anything negative about him, well, I guess, he seldom eats vegetable during meal time?

Looking at all the pictures taken by his teacher in school (a lot more on the DVD but I had to chose a few of my favorite pictures), I am very certain that he's having a great time there and he's fully ready for nursery class next year! Oh yes by then he would be alone in his childcare as his korkor is moving on to primary school life!!

So now, with Rynus progressing well in all domains, including physical, intellectual, emotional and social aspects in school, I think the next challenge we will be focusing at home, is to build his Moral Intelligence! The reason is simple, moral growth is an ongoing process that will span the course of children's lifetimes. The habits and beliefs of Moral Intelligence that we instill in our children now will become the ethical foundation they will use forever. Rynus is displaying good characters with tender loving care under his parents and teachers, but we could not shield our children from toxic influences from our culture.  We must give them the deep-seated convictions to stand by their choices and counter any pressure from inside or outside that go against the principles of good character.

"Moral Intelligence (MQ), is the capacity to understand right from wrong; it means to have strong ethical convictions and to act on them so that one behaves in the right and honorable way." 

"Three virtues form the core of moral intelligence: empathy, conscience, and self-control. The other four virtues, respect, kindness, tolerance and fairness, then combine to form what we know about integrity, justice, and citizenship. These principles together create a child's 'moral compass', guiding the way towards responsible living in harmony with others."  - Michele Borba

I guess I do not need to explain the reason about why we should build Moral Intelligence in our children, the definition is self explanatory. I did mention in my post before that Rynus has relatively high EQ, but MQ is something different and I feel it's indeed more crucial to build by parents at home. It's like even a devil might have high IQ and high EQ, but low MQ is the very reason that leads him to do the wrong acts. A quick search on the internet. allows me to refer to this simple checklist, which helps me to assess my child's MQ level.

Assessing our children's moral intelligence - what does the result look like?
The Young Adolescent (without adult reminders or coaxing) regularly:

Answer with a Yes or No
 YES  Shows sensitivity and has a lot of feeling for others.
  NO   Tries to see things from the other person's view, not just his/her own.
 YES  Is honest and trustworthy; can be counted on to keep his/her word.
 YES  Feels shame or guilt about his/her wrong actions; accepts the blame.
 YES  Easily calms down when excited or angry; copes with behavioral impulses.
  NO   Behaves appropriately without reminders; thinks before acting.
 YES  Treats everyone respectfully and courteously; no back talk or sass.
  NO   Shares, helps, or comforts others without expecting something in return.
  NO   Is open-minded; listens to all sides before forming opinions.
  NO   Focuses on the positive traits of others instead of their differences.
  NO   Tries to solve problems fairly and peacefully; willing to compromise.

Less than 8 "yes" = the Moral IQ needs some boosting. 

As I was answering these questions, I know many will say Rynus is still young so it's highly unlikely I would get more than 8 "yes" but if this set of questions are applied on Renzo, I am very certain he would easily score about 9 to 10 "yes", thus it's never too early to build their Moral Intelligence so they have deeply developed sense of right and wrong from young, and can use it to stand up against the influences they get from the society when they grow up. And even if we just look at the short term impact, if you have a toddler who tells lies to get treats like extra TV time or candies/toys as rewards, that's an immediate sign that you need to put in some efforts in Moral Intelligence building.

So in a way I think we've probably done a good-enough-job to teach Renzo how to tell right from wrong at a very young age. As for Rynus, there's still a huge room for improvement. He's still not willing to compromise whenever he needs to share things with Renzo; he often requires reminders and even if we preempt him in advance before bringing him out, usually he would forget about everything he's promised us once he's overwhelmed with even the tiniest little thing that he doesn't get to experience at home. And sometimes though he feels ashamed doing the wrong act, he refuses to admit and accept the blame.

There's definitely a lot to work on and I've been referring to the ways to build strong moral character in kids from Dr. Michele Borba, many tips here are pretty "common sense" to me but I am sure we parents need to be far more intentional in applying these at home:
http://micheleborba.com/blog/building-childrens-moral-intelligence/