Values
Stories to talk about values with your child
Sharing, being brave, kindness, self-confidence, honesty, patience: kids live these values every day far more than they learn them from explanations. Each page below offers what to expect at each age, from 3 to 8, a short story excerpt to read together, and questions to talk it over, with no lecture and no moral.
· By the Child Fiction team
A story to talk about, not a moral to memorize
Young children rarely take away a story’s moral the way we spell it out: they often read it very literally. What a story gives them instead is a character to watch, feelings to name, and a situation to compare with their own. The conversation that follows, with you, is what connects it to their life.
When we write these pages and our stories, we lean on a few research findings, modest but useful:
- Show what the value brings: among children ages 3 to 7, a story that focused on the positive consequences of honesty encouraged truth-telling more than stories about punishment (Lee and colleagues, 2014).
- Pick realistic situations: preschoolers shared more after a story with human characters than after the same story with animals (Larsen and colleagues, 2018). In the animated stories where you pick a value, your child is the one who acts, in an everyday situation; their stuffed animals can come along for the ride.
- Ask them to explain instead of explaining: asking 5- and 6-year-olds to explain parts of a story helped them draw a general idea from it, sometimes more than hearing the moral (Walker and Lombrozo, 2017).
- Talk about it again, act it out: young children find the helping-others messages in kids’ TV shows hard to pick up on their own; talking about them afterward or acting them out strengthens them (Wilson, 2008).
How to use these pages
- Pick a value that fits what your child is going through right now: a fight over a toy, a first time that makes them nervous, a little white lie.
- Read the story excerpt aloud, without commenting, and let them react.
- Ask one or two questions, no more, and listen to the whole answer.
- Come back to it later, when a real situation comes up: “Remember Alice and her blue chalk?”
Each value is linked to one of our free bedtime stories, texts to read aloud together at bedtime. To go further, our guide to values and stories explains this approach and answers the questions parents ask most often.
All values
- Stories about sharing for kids ages 3 to 8“It’s mine!” Why lending is so hard at 3, how to make taking turns work, a sidewalk-chalk story to read together, and questions to ask.
- Stories about being brave: trying even when you’re a little scaredOrdering ice cream, a first swim lesson, speaking up: how to help kids be brave one small step at a time, with a short story and questions.
- Stories about kindness for kids: everyday moments and questions to shareSpotting the kid who’s alone, bringing a stuffed animal to a crying friend: how kindness grows from ages 3 to 8, with a lost-giraffe story and questions.
- Stories about self-confidence for kids: trying, slipping up, and trying again“I’m bad at everything”: what to say, how to help your child try, slip up, and try again, plus a shoelace story and questions about self-confidence.
- Stories about honesty for kids, and what to do when your child liesWhy kids lie, what to do when your child lies, and how to talk about honesty without shaming: tips by age, a short story excerpt, and questions to ask.
- Stories about patience: helping kids wait (a little)“Is it time yet?” Tricks to make waiting visible, a star-cookie story to read together, and questions to talk about patience with your child.