Happiness is one of the most important parenting goals in today's modern society. To promote a happy childhood, we need to understand what happiness means to children. Contrary to the view that young children may equate happiness with satisfying material desires and experiencing simple pleasures, in this article, I review recent developmental…

Children often say that possible events are impossible, and only gradually come to see these events as possible. For instance, they often deny that people could do unusual things, like own a pet peacock, or immoral things, like stealing or lying. These possibility denials are surprising. For instance, children have first-hand experience with the…

The school, being the second home of pupils, is the second major force in the formation of the pupils' moral structure. It should be the crucial partner of the home in tempering the character of the youth and children with unbending quality, especially in values formation. In this case, it is necessary to evaluate the current status of values…

A potential underlying mechanism associated with the difficulties in social interactions in Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) concerns the abnormal development of moral reasoning. The present study examined utilitarian and deontological judgments in impersonal and personal moral dilemmas, comparing 66 individuals with ASD and 61 typically…

The emergence of prosocial tendencies in early childhood is still not well understood and not commonly tested with direct measures. This study investigated predictors of prosocial behavior (i.e., prosocial decision-making and prosocial creativity) in 3-to-5-year-old children and explored the role of demographic factors on empathy and moral…

In order to extend research on children's Theory of Mind (ToM) within moral development, researchers have proposed a novel area of research, Morally Relevant ToM. It has been argued to better account for the moral and social considerations that children are required to make when using their ToM abilities in real life situations. To further the…

Moral emotions are experienced in daily life and are crucial for mediating appropriate social behaviors, as they prevent individuals from committing transgressions. In this study, caregivers of 377 children aged between 2.5 and 6.5 years old completed the Moral Emotions Questionnaire (MEQ), a parent report aimed to separately identify the presence…

The research presented in this essay is grounded in Social Domain Theory. Research provides substantial evidence that children's social development is characterized by the formation of distinctly different systems of thought, including those in the moral, social-conventional, and personal domains. A main focus here is on morality, defined as…

Violent crimes and domestic violence are notoriously high in South Africa, which leaves many children defenceless to struggle with emotions such as loneliness and sadness. The healthy development and socialisation of children can be difficult in a society characterised by domestic tribulations, poverty, crime, single-parent homes, and absent…

Although incarcerated individuals have committed potentially 'immoral' crimes, many are also parents, and need to foster their children's moral development. As such, incarcerated parents occupy a paradoxical position: they are labelled as morally deviant yet simultaneously expected to provide moral guidance for their children. This study explores…

Recognizing character strengths in others, such as kindness and honesty, can encourage children to apply these strengths themselves. Developing character strengths is associated with various positive outcomes, such as improved life satisfaction and connectedness with others. As films are omnipresent in children's lives nowadays, this qualitative…

This study aims to analyze the impact of the "Curriculum of Values Education" over the university students' levels of acquisition of moral maturity and human values. This study was planned as a quasi-experimental design, defined as the "Pretest/Post-test Control Group Design". The study group of the study consisted of 77…

When making moral judgments of past actions, adults often think counterfactually about what could have been done differently. Considerable evidence suggests that counterfactual thinking emerges around age 6, but it remains unknown how this development influences children's moral judgments. Across two studies, Australian children aged 4-9 (N = 236,…

This article examines Ibn Khaldun's educational philosophy through the lens of contemporary children's geographies. Drawing on his reflections in the "Muqaddimah," we analyze historical teaching practices in medieval North Africa and Muslim Spain, focusing on their implications for child development, spatial learning, and moral…

In industrialized societies, adults exhibit stable preferences for the types of people, animals, and entities they feel moral concern for (Crimston et al., 2016). Only one published study to date has utilized the moral circles paradigm to examine these preferences in children, finding that as children age, their preferences shift to become more…