AUTHOR STRESSES MAKING THE MOST OF TEACHING KIDS.

Byline: David Barton Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

Robert Coles knows kids. Winner of a Pulitzer Prize, professor of psychiatry at Harvard, and author of such books as ``Children in Crisis'' and ``The Spiritual Life of Children,'' he long ago established his credentials on the subject.

So, his new book, ``The Moral Intelligence of Children'' (Random House; $21), has been anticipated widely by parents and professionals alike. The book sums up of much of his work with and about children, and comes at a time when the market for books such as William Bennett's ``Book of Virtues'' and Daniel Goldman's ``Emotional Intelligence'' has never been bigger.

But in a recent telephone interview, Coles pointed out that his new book is not about children as much as it is about parents.

When it comes to failures in child-rearing, he is less apt to indulge parents who rail against ``society'' and ``the media,'' and instead seems to be saying, ``We have met the enemy and he is us.'' ``The real issue in all of this is not so much the children, as it is ourselves,'' he said from his offices at Harvard. ``We get what we live by. We get from our children what we demonstrate to them, and if there is a shift in (societal) values, we are going to embody that. It's not as though they're being affected by some alien sources, because the parents are still the primary force.

``Individual parents can make a huge difference no matter what the society is like,'' Coles said in his distinctive, husky voice. ``Parents can win their children away from the TV and the movies, and encourage them through the stories we tell them, but most of all through our own behavior.''

In Coles' opinion, it is not just parents who are responsible for educating children, for teaching them moral lessons. Anyone who interacts with children is a teacher to them, and that holds wonderful possibilities.

``I remember a woman at a particular toy store, Mrs. Pratt, and I still remember how kind she was toward my children,'' he said. ``I think she gave them much more than the toys. She set an example by being courteous and sensitive, speaking to them with civility and respect.

``It wasn't as though she got a big degree and wrote lots of books,'' he said in a self-deprecating aside. ``She was just a good person.''

Coles' definition of a ``good person,'' or a ``moral child,'' is about as fundamental as can be.

``I think a moral child is a child who, in the biblical tradition, understands the Golden Rule,'' he said. ``It's a child who emphasizes kindness and sensitivity, respects others, obeys the laws, is loyal to a family, to a neighborhood, to a nation.''

These are hardly revolutionary thoughts. In fact, some critics have come away from the book saying, as did The New York Times, ``When you turn the final page, you feel that you have spent a couple of hundred pages with a decent, intelligent man, but you are not so sure exactly what you have learned that you didn't know before.''

But Coles says the book's purpose is not necessarily to introduce new ideas, but to emphasize old ones.

``I wrote the book to encourage parents who give their children a moral education,'' he said. ``The more this is made an explicit part of family life, the better it'll be for the kids. If you shrug your shoulders and ignore this sort of stuff, you're still teaching the child. Even the avoidance of moral questions is a moral posture, so to speak.''

Coles writes because he is, at heart, optimistic about child- rearing. He doesn't buy the argument that some kids are just ``born bad.''

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Photo: Author Robert Coles: ``We get what we live by. We get from our children what we demonstrate to them, and if there is a shift in (societal) values, we are going to embody that.''

Tom Jagoe/Daily News