Everyday Ways To Teach Your Kids Valuable Lessons
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Many men’s memories of their fathers consist of weekends spent watching a football game or doing chores around the house. You don’t need a big event or occasion to begin instilling valuable lessons in your kids. Everyday things, including doing chores around the house or how you spend your weekends, are what most kids will remember and where they’ll draw their lessons from. Here are a few unique daily opportunities for your kids to use as moral and ethics-building lessons.
The Way You Treat Service Employees
Humbleness and kindness are lessons learned early in life. Simple interactions with the grocery store cart guy or the coffee barista will shape how they communicate with others. Even when it seems like they’re not paying attention, they are. Forgiveness is also a valuable lesson intertwined with interacting with the public. If another driver cuts you off or the cook at your favorite restaurant makes your meal wrong, remember, your kids are watching. How you interact with others teaches your child compassion and humility.
How You Respond To Stress
Work and family responsibilities can lead to stress. Children pick up stress cues from their parents, including how they handle it and how much it affects their day-to-day life. Kids will continue using the stress relief techniques they pick up from you throughout much of their lives. If you manage stress behind a closed door, shutting out the rest of the world, your child may also do the same.
Your Mood at the End of the Day
Your generalized mood after a long day will stay ingrained into your kid’s memories for many years. Your kids will shape their own relationships around this, internalizing what is and isn’t normal based on these interactions. They will use these memories to determine what’s important and not important in life.
Your Work Ethic
Children also learn their work ethic from their parents. They may learn entrepreneurship from a parent who owns a business. They may develop a keen sense of learning and curiosity from a parent who is constantly taking classes. Children also pay attention to your attitude about work. If they recognize that you dislike your job, they may be more willing to stay in a job they don’t like as adults. Important lessons surrounding work mood and morale include commitment, ambition, ethics, and dedication.
How You Handle Mistakes
Everyone makes mistakes. How you handle and how you respond to your child’s mistakes will help them develop their problem-solving skills. If you quickly blame others, they’re likely to do the same. If you accept responsibility and look for a solution, they’re also more likely to do the same.
How Often You’re Present
Ask any adult what they remember most about their parents growing up, and they’ll likely include a snippet of information on how present or not present they were. They will recall if a parent made it home for dinner most evenings or how they spent their weekends. They’ll remember if a parent made it to their sporting events and concerts. Their memories aren’t just shaped by attendance, either. They will remember how involved you were, including whether you watched them hit their first home run or if you were caught up in your phone.
What You Prioritize
Kids also remember what priorities their parents held during their childhood. If you’re constantly cleaning or doing other household tasks rather than enjoying valuable family time, this may also be how they manage their own families in the future. Hiring a lawn care company shows them that you value family time over household maintenance. Giving up control of tasks like fertilization, tree care, weed control, and lawn pest control allows you to spend your weekends doing more valuable things, like teaching a kid how to ride a bike or spending the day at the lake fishing.
The Importance of Communication
Good communication skills start in childhood. Children who are encouraged to communicate their feelings, thoughts, and plans will continue doing so throughout life. Modeling and encouraging children to communicate when they’re frustrated or mad also helps them develop conflict-resolution skills. The more open communication that you encourage in the household, the closer you’ll feel to your children. Once you open up the lines of communication, you’ll also find that they’re more likely to come to you with problems as they get older.
Parenting is hard. Not only are you tasked with keeping a small human alive, but you’re also responsible for shaping and molding them into responsible, good people. Teaching children lessons is a good start, but modeling these same lessons is even more important. Children are always watching and learning, and the ways in which you respond to stress or interact with the public will be important elements of their personality.
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