Psympathic, Jurnal Ilmiah Psikologi Pendidikan dan Perkembangan 2009, Vol. I, No.1: 15 - 24 MEMBANGUN KARAKTER PADA ANAK USIA PRASEKOLAH Bambang Syamsul Arifin Fakultas Psikologi Universitas Islam Bandung Preschool children—as we have known—have much potential which could be used as a basis to build up their character, either in family, school, and society. Their potential therefore needs to be nurtured to help them to achieve their potential to the fullest. But daily life nowadays—could bring negative impact on their development. The intensity of meaningful communication in daily conversation between children and their parents—was seen as a major obstacle on this process, which then becoming the main reason behind the unsuccessful learning of moral values, honesty, and manners. This condition then have negative impact on their character—as we have seen today—many children has emotional disturbance, violent, and shows an inappropriate behaviors. From this phenomenon, a couple effective approaches could be used to design an effective learning good program for their character development—which are knowing the good, reasoning the good, feeling the good, and acting the good. From this approaches point of view—altering their behavior and make good manners as habit were seen as the best approaches available, since altering behavior can be very effective way to develop their character and potential to the fullest. Their character behavior would also be affected by the daily basis learning and natural conditioning to make a good behavior as a habit. Character development for children in this case are including personal character which is an accumulation of goodness that will drive individuals to do the right thing, have a strong self consciousness on moral values, become a good member of society, ethical, knows which is right and wrong, and act consistently on Golden Rules. Aside from it, nationhood and citizenship characteristic is need to be developed too—where this trait is the accumulation of the personal goodness and set of moral and culture values such as an obedience to the state authority, laws, responsibility, fairness and active participation on public affairs. Keywords: character, values, manners and good behaviors Pendahuluan Anak usia prasekolah merupakan bagian dari unsur bangsa yang mempunyai hak untuk mendapatkan kesempatan pendidikan yang baik sebagai bekal dalam mengarungi kehidupan berbangsa dan bernegara. Potensi otak anak seperti the absorbent mind. Sehingga pada masa ini anak cepat sekali meniru perilaku orang dewasa. Para ahli psikologi menganalogikan otak anak dengan sponge. Sponge yang kering cepat sekali menyerap air. Apabila sponge diletakkan ke dalam air yang jernih dan bersih, yang diserap juga air jernih dan bersih. Namun sebaliknya, apabila sponge diletakkan ke dalam air selokan yang kotor, yang diserap juga air selokan yang kotor. Artinya anak sangat peka dalam menerima stimulus yang diberikan oleh orang dewasa dan lingkungannya. Sehingga orang tua dan guru yang mengajar kebaikan kepada anak usia dini lebih efektif. Air jernih yang bersih sebagai gambaran kebaikan yang diberikan oleh orang tua dan guru kepada anak berdampak dalam otak anak, adalah kejernihan, kebersihan atau kebaikan, sedangkan apabila orang tua dan guru menyampaikan sesuatu