Greater Good Parenting

Raising Caring, Courageous Kids

Parents want to raise kind, caring, courageous children...

...but few feel like they know precisely how to do that.

Over the past two decades, researchers have expanded our understanding of the keys to developing character strengths such as forgiveness, generosity, gratitude, and honesty in our children—to help parents raise children who are supportive of others and committed to something bigger than themselves.

In order to help bridge the gap between research and the daily lives of parents, the Greater Good Science Center launched an initiative to help parents raise kids of high character who treat others with compassion and respect.

Learn More About This Initiative

Greater Good Parenting Guide

Compassion

Compassion:

Noticing and feeling motivated to help relieve suffering.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness:

Freely choosing to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed us, giving up the desire or power to punish.

Generosity

Generosity:

Not simply giving but giving more than is expected in a situation, incurring a cost to promote someone else’s welfare.

Gratitude

Gratitude:

Acknowledging the gifts and benefits we’ve received and recognizing that the sources of this goodness come from outside of ourselves.

Honesty

Honesty:

Behaving or expressing yourself in a way that is fair, free of deceit, and morally correct.

Humility

Humility:

Being able to see and accept one’s own strengths and limitations without defensiveness or judgment.

Love

Love:

Serving others without expectation of reward or repayment, not limited to romantic relationships.

Purpose

Purpose:

Intending to do something that feels personally meaningful and is also directed toward improving the lives of others.

Reliability

Reliability:

Being consistently good in quality or performance; behaving responsibly, by actually doing what we pledge to do.

About This Initiative

With support from the John Templeton Foundation, in July of 2017 the GGSC launched a new initiative, Raising Caring, Courageous Kids, to help parents raise kids committed to the well-being of others. This initiative has two major components for the public.

1. Grants to support innovation in community-based parenting programs. The GGSC provided a total of $1 million in grant funding to 16 community-based organizations—schools, houses of worship, community centers—that have strong connections to parents of school-age children.  Their programs help parents nurture strengths like generosity, gratitude, and forgiveness in their kids. The GGSC and a team of scientific advisors have helped these organizations identify research relevant to their programs, translate this research into lessons for parents, and determine how to better evaluate the success of their work.

2. Multimedia resources directly for parents. Building on its strong track record, the GGSC has been developing a range of new resources for raising caring, courageous kids, widely sharing with parents the top research and best practices. This includes publishing dozens of new articles for parents on Greater Good, creating several practical exercises for parents to try with their kids on Greater Good in Action, and releasing a series of short videos designed for mobile devices and social media to reach busy parents on the go. These resources identify and report on cutting-edge research findings. We also plan to distill some of the key lessons learned from the parenting programs that receive grants through the initiative.

 

Get Involved

There are many ways to support our mission: become a Greater Good member, make a donation, volunteer for an event, or subscribe to our e-newsletters.

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