What They See is What You Get
The priorities and values you model in good times and bad are likely to show up in your children and their own families. It is an instinctive desire in the life of a child is to want to imitate their parents, especially the one of the same gender. In following their instinct to be like mom or dad they don’t discern what is good or bad behavior. Their eyes and ears are drinking in the vivid images and sounds of everything they see and hear you do both good and bad. Then, they try to become just like you. Here are three ways of helping your kids establish a healthy sense of who they are and how you look at life.
- What you notice impacts what your kids will think is important. Catching them doing something right in areas of character like courtesy, honesty, kindness and serving others can create a healthy influence in their long range priorities. What gets noticed gets repeated.
- Keeping things real in how you respond to their successes and failures. If you are timely and specific in your praise and correction, your children can get a clear picture of what a good job looks like.
- Keep the drama under control. It’s better to respond to spilt milk with restraint than blow it out of proportion. The bigger deal you make over something, the more likely your kids will hide their failures from you.
Written by Phil Hodges