WOWW: A Parent's Example

The prophet Brigham Young said: “We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do. We should set them an example that we wish them to imitate.”

On Sunday during one of the talks a sister shared a quote that stuck out to me. I don't recall exactly how it went or what the stat was but here is the idea: A lot of the time (a percent was given) when we get after our children we are disciplining them for something that they have seen us do.

The week prior to this I had a random conversation with a lady working at the cash register at Wal-mart about this very topic. I am not even sure how it came up. She told me about how she has a pet bird that loves to be squirted with a water bottle so one day when her granddaughter was over she let her try it. She loved it. Later she heard her son say, "who taught her how to work a spray bottle." The grandmother confessed. The reason for the questioning: the little girl got a hold of some Windex and now knew how to work it. Ooops!

On another occasion the granddaughter said to her, "Shut up, Grandma." She got after her and wondered where she got it from. Just a few minutes later her dog started barking and she yelled, "Shut-up, Spot!" (can't remember the real name) We truly do teach our children or other's children when we don't even realize it.

Wow! Wake-up call! I am recognizing even the smallest things that transfer over to my son. Sometimes the things that I do are not bad or wrong but when imitated by a toddler they are not the best. Example: I wiggle my little girls hands to help her dance to music so of course my son wants to do this but I get after him for being to rough. Now looking at it boy does it seem so unfair that he is getting in trouble. Was that really his fault...No! he watched Mommy do it.

Let us be good examples to our children. Let us think before we act. Let us be examples in word and deed. Let us be able to say, "Do as I say and do" and not "Do as I say not as I do". Let us think before we discipline our children, they might just be doing something just like Mom or Dad, maybe we are the ones who need a little correcting. Just a thought.