I want my kids to be smart and successful, but I also want them to be good. I want them to be the kind of people other parents would like to see their kids marry. I want them to make sound values-based decisions that help them be safe and happy.

Like most parents, I spend lots of time trying to instill virtues like honesty, respect, responsibility, fairness, and kindness.

But building character is more complicated than teaching math or manners. It involves the heart as well as the head. The goal is to make good thoughts and conduct a matter of habit. I want my children to know what’s good, to want what’s good, and to do what’s good.

Effective character-building is captured in the acronym T.E.A.M. (teach, enforce, advocate, and model).

We teach character by promoting the values and developing the ethical virtues that make up a good person – trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship. Kids should understand what each of these traits looks like.

We entrench these values by enforcing them, by backing up our rhetoric with appropriate consequences. What you allow, you encourage.

We passionately and relentlessly advocate our commitment to good character so our children have no doubt what we want for them and expect from them.

And we instill positive values by modeling the virtues we want to see in our children. This is done by how we deal with pressures, frustrations, fatigue, and other everyday actions, especially what we say and do when we think no one’s looking and we won’t get caught.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.