My children frequently visit my former husband and his wife, who often tell them that high moral standards are outdated. In such circumstances, how can I teach my children the importance of being morally clean?

Response by Hal G. Ferguson, retired instructor, Department of Family Science, Ricks College.

Children are not born with a clear understanding of who they are. They develop their identity as they grow, based on their experiences and their interpretation of those experiences. As children interact with their parents, they learn to identify with them and come to feel that each parent is somehow a “part” of themselves. Both parents, regardless of character, play an important role in this process.

Therefore, we are right to be concerned about our children’s association with those who do not advocate high moral standards. But the way to deal with that concern is not to restrict the children’s association with their father or to attempt to discredit him in their eyes. Doing so may make the children feel, in a very real sense, that they, too, are being discredited.

For example, Ann (her name has been changed), whose parents were divorced, had lived mostly with her mother, who did not live Church standards. Ann felt discouraged when her father, an active Church member, spoke disparagingly of her mother. “I often wish that he would not speak of her that way, because I love her and think that he is also tearing me down,” Ann said. Though she is now in college, has a strong testimony, and is committed to living gospel standards, Ann’s identity is still not totally separate from that of her mother, and her father’s criticism of her mother still hurts and causes Ann to feel “caught in the middle.”

Instilling feelings of dislike toward a parent can interfere with a child’s spiritual and emotional development. One woman’s parents divorced when she was young, and the mother embittered the children toward their father, who was an alcoholic. Years later, after the girl grew up and married, her husband was killed in the Vietnam War, leaving her with two children. Within a few years she remarried and gave birth to a child with disabilities. She wondered why so much grief had come into her life and concluded—wrongfully, though that made little difference—that it was because she had hated her father. She could find no peace until she found him, asked his forgiveness, and offered to help him.

As we teach our children, we should remember that the commandment “honour thy father and thy mother” (see Ex. 20:12) is not predicated on the condition that the parents are righteous. When referring to a child’s father or mother who does not advocate or live by gospel standards, we should do so in a context that separates the parent from his or her behavior. Encouraging the children to love and respect such a parent is in their best interest. But at the same time, the children need to know—both by word and by example—the importance of and the rewards inherent in living gospel standards.

“But,” we may ask, “what if the child is being injured physically or morally by a wayward (or even evil) parent?” It is unfortunate that such ever happens, but still it would seem that teaching hate is not the best response. Such children need to be comforted and assured that they are not bad because of what has happened to them.

The problem of teaching children moral standards is not unique to divorced parents. Even in an intact marriage, one or both spouses may not believe in or live gospel standards. The way to teach children from such homes to live high moral standards is to help them understand that they are members of three great families—their present earthly family; their premortal heavenly family; and the family of Christ, which they enter by being “born again” into his family through the baptisms of the water and the Spirit.

Children need to understand their true identity as sons and daughters of God. They also need to understand the opportunities offered them as they bear the name of Christ. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell put it, “How can we truly understand who we are unless we know who we were and what we have the power to become? … How can one understand his tiny, individual plot without knowing, even a little, about Father’s grand, galactic plans?” (Ensign, May 1986, p. 35.)

Elder Charles Didier called such a sense of knowing who we are “spiritual security.” He said that “knowing who we really are prepares us to use that knowledge to face temptations, to resist them, and then to act righteously” (Ensign, May 1987, p. 27).

The most powerful resource we can have in teaching others is that of example coupled with love. Example can bear unquestionable witness to the value of high moral principles. A parent needs to let children know they are loved, and seek to build the best relationship possible with them—without discrediting the other parent. As the scriptures say, if we “train up a child in the way he should go … when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6; see also 2 Ne. 4:5).

There is no guarantee that children will ultimately choose to live gospel teachings even if all their family, friends, teachers, and neighbors set good examples and encourage them in righteousness. They have their agency and may choose not to live by what they have been taught. But if we teach our children correct principles and set a good example for them, chances are good that they will want to exercise that agency to choose that which is good and true.

Illustrated by Robert Anderson McKay