Core values are essentially the pillars of all of the decisions made in our lives.

If your child doesnt learn about their core values, your toddlers ability to make beneficial decisions as an adult will have no compass and their life will be unguided.

Life has too many temptations, that can cause heartache for our children if we don’t help them become better people by instilling core values, then we are doing them a disservice as their parents.

All things in moderation, too much of anything is dentrimental. Core values provides us a balance from overdoing any one thing.

As parents, it is our responsibility to ingrain core values within our children and the earlier the better, during their toddler years, so that they don’t need to go through the difficult process of unlearning bad behavior.

Teaching your toddler principles to live by, allows your child to know that life has boundaries.

As parents instilling these guidelines so that they can understand that there are certain rules that your household lives by. These rules need to be exercised while they are in school and anytime outside of the household.

Core Values to Teach our Toddlers

1| Honesty

A refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way.

Honesty is the most important one on here, because without honesty with yourself, you will not understand your reality.

If we want your toddlers to be successful, we need to teach your toddlers to be honest with others and most importantly, themselves.

First, hold your toddler accountable when they’ve been dishonest, follow through with the consequence to show your serious that your household believes in being honest with one another.

Second, dont overpraise your toddler, this gives them an illusion that they are better than what they are, being honest starts with the parent.

Instead, acknowledge your childs accomplishment, but also acknowledge what still needs improvement. This way your child understands that they’ve recieved recognition, but there is still something to work on.

Your toddler gets to be honest about what is really in front of them, the scenario above helps them see this.

The five other values are more easy to digest and understand For your toddler once Honesty is taught.

2| Courage

Mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.

Courage coincides with a lot of other values, such as Justice, Strength or Self Confidence, but I feel that courage is one that encompasses all of these very important qualities in one.

Teaching our toddlers to speak up, or call something out if they see something was done unfairly, or even let us know that they don’t agree with something, encourages a Courageous mindset.

This lets your toddler know that, what they believe, thoughts and opinions are valid and they can speak up about it, if they so choose to.

3| Independence

Not requiring or relying on something else, not contingent.

The value of independence is a fine line, you don’t want to teach your toddler that they need to do everything themselves, but instead that they exercise being self reliant or resourceful to accomplish a goal on their own.

This boosts your toddlers self esteem, self confidence and belief that they will be fine if yoir toddler needs to do things themselves.

4| Respect

High or special regard.

Respect for themselves is huge, this teaches your toddlers that respect for themselves comes first. Naturally, if you respect yourself, respect is given to others as well.

The value of respect teaches your toddler that there is a way to speak to others and act towards others, this encourages a level of kindness towards others and towards themselves.

Which will encourage healthy interpersonal relationships wishing your childs life.

5| Discipline

Control gained by enforcing obedience or order.

This is a very important value to teach your child.

Discipline is a practice of self control and as toddlers this concept is completely laughable, as they test their boundaries at this age, but with reinforcement from us parent, discipline can go a long way for your child.

Self control is the bones of discipline, to ensure your toddler learns self control is the mastery of discipline.

Reinforce your consequences if they go against the rules, this shows your toddler that this value is important to you and your toddler will only benefit from this.

6| Gratitude

State of being grateful, thankful.

Out of all the values, Gratitude is my favorite. Almost every night, I talk to my toddlers and we do a grateful prayer.

We list off the things we are grateful for that day, I will go first, then my oldest and then the youngest will go last.

This allows your toddler to start the mindset of looking for things to be happy about, build up their endorphins and happiness level, even the simplest things like a movie you watched or the bed you are sleeping in.

Grateful prayers allows them to understand that you can be thankful for any and everything and to see the beauty in all things.

Conclusion

Core values is extremely important, if you feel like this sparked a desire to set your own core values, don’t agree to the ones I’ve listed… check out some here.

Come up with your own that you think is important to teach to your child.

As your toddlers parent, you want to arm your children with as many tools to make them successful adults.

Without you, they are capable of making sound decisions, therefore having better results and a happier life.

At the end of all of this, as Mothers and Fathers, we want our children live happy, successful and long lives. Setting these core values early on in their lives, will help your child achieve this.

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Your Mommy Blogger,

-Maria