California State University, Northridge professors Gregory Velazco y Trianosky and Alyce Blackmon said parents try so hard to give their children a life better than the one they had that they often forget some lessons are more valuable than material things.

"It can be a real struggle, particularly here in Los Angeles where we have a lot of people in immigrant communities," said Velazco y Trianosky, chair of CSUN's philosophy department. "They come here and work so hard to make a better life for their families -- to give their kids what they never had and achieve dreams they thought were impossible -- and in the process they often shield their children from the hardships and struggles they¹ve endured.

"But if you isolate your children from the struggle, they are going to lose those values that made the success possible in the first place," Velazco y Trianosky said. "We see the things we think make a good life, but we forget all the strengths and values we had that got us here in the first place."

Blackmon, chair of CSUN's department of family environmental sciences, said family holiday rituals can serve as reminders of what values a family holds dear as well as ways to preserve cultural traditions.

"But parents have to do more than that, particularly those families who live middle class or privileged lives," Blackmon said. "They have an obligation to share with their children an awareness that there are others out there who are less well off than they are."

Blackmon said parents need to do this not only by their actions, but also with words.

"In order to form a concept of thankfulness, you have to tell a child, particularly young children, what that means and how their life is better than some other child's life," she said.

In sprawling urban areas like Los Angeles, Blackmon said, it is possible for children to grow up without ever seeing what poverty is like.

"While there is a lot of ethnic or racial diversity in our neighborhoods, there isn't much diversity of economic backgrounds," she said.

Blackmon said people often point to television as an evil box to keep their children from. But, she said, it can also be a useful tool in trying to teach children about realities of the world.

"I remember sitting down and watching the evening news with my oldest son when he was about preschool-age," she said. "We would sit and talk about what we saw and he was able to absorb and understand that his life was a heck of a lot better than that of many people in the rest of the world."

Blackmon said national or international news, which puts less of an emphasis on murder and mayhem than local news, may provide parents the tools to help them put their lives into perspective for their children.

"There's a lot that can be said about the famine in Ethiopia, but it is also something that children who have so much need to know," she said.

Blackmon said parents can also use allowances as a way of teaching the concept that hard work pays off.

"There is something to be said for the work ethic," she said. "You learn, by working for it, to appreciate what you have earned."

Velazco y Trianosky added that parents need to be supportive when their children go on to college and want to take classes, in such subjects as philosophy or religious studies, that are not necessarily seen as part of a successful career path.

"They may be exploring concepts that reinforce the values the family holds dear," he said.