How to Raise Your Child to Be a Good Person in Five Easy Steps

In terrible economic times such as the recession in which we've found ourselves in 2009, money for most, if not all, families is incredibly tight. Both parents may need to find work, sometimes two or more jobs each. While we're struggling to pay rent or a mortgage and put food on the table at the same time, it's easy to lose perspective of what our main job truly is: To raise the best possible children that we can.

Although not complicated, it's also not easy. Here are five steps to success that we should all follow.

1. Your child's best role model is yourself. Kids are like sponges; they absorb everything around them - including your own values, judgments, way of speaking, manner of dealing with others. Your child will grow up unknowingly a composite of your own core set of principles. Be mindful of what values you do - and don't - want to impart.

2. Spend time with your children. It's the time with you that will last longer than any material thing that you can give them. We're overburdened with making ends meet; we're rushing from one job to another. The most precious thing that you can give your child that tells him or her that you truly love them is the gift of your time.

3. Read with your child every night. It automatically makes that precious time together a reality. It's a wonderful way to end a hectic day for you both. It's relaxing. It's fun. It will make for a lifelong memory for your child. Read 'chapter' books, or books that are 'to be continued', so that you each have something for which to look forward the next evening. Even if it's for five minutes a night, this time spent together is so important. It shows your child that you love them, and instills a sense of love of language and the written word for them.

4. Give your child a choice of religious values. You may be a church-going person or not. If you are, make sure that your child is exposed and part of your religious beliefs. If you're not, take them to a church, or any kind of spiritual activity, together. You may question your own religious beliefs, but by not giving your child a chance to experience a spiritual base, you're denying them the chance to make up their own minds about faith, religion and a sense of someone greater than us all. Read "The Secret" with or to them. Visit a new parish or church. Attend a Buddhist-based one-day retreat. Make the effort to expose them to a world beyond this one so that they know that such a world can exist.

5. Tell them that you love them unconditionally. This is particularly hard for men to do, but in the case of fathers, it's perhaps even more important that this is done. Children need to HEAR and thus assimilate that their parents do love them for who they are. In a cold, cruel, unfair world, children need to hear that the most important persons in their lives, their parents, love them exactly as they are, and will always be there for them. There's nothing more wonderful than knowing that someone loves you for exactly who you are.

These are simple, realistic things that any parent, married or not, can and should do to develop their child into a successful adult. All is takes, really, is your time.