Teach Your Children...Part III

There's two ways parents can choose to raise their children...Lead by Example and Do as I Say, Not as I Do.
More often than not, I see the latter in place...and yet these same parents get upset when their offspring imitates their thoughts and actions.
How you conduct yourself affects the way your children to grow up, whether you intend it to be that way or not. 
Your child is a constant presence in your life.  Yet how many times have you come home complaining about your job, your boss, or your life in general?  How many times have you said something unkind to your spouse?  Or a parent?  A neighbor, perhaps?  How many times have you stated bold-faced lies to another in the presence of your own children?
Negative behaviors affect your child's upbringing in more ways than you ever could imagine.  And when we call them on it, we don't often stop and think that we might be the source of the problem.
A father that berates his wife in front of his young son will experience his son believing it's OK to berate women, and will likely have problems with the boy talking back to his mother.  That's just the tip of the iceberg.
My mind flashes back to a televised public service announcement I once saw years ago from the 1980s, sponsored by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.  You can still find it on YouTube.
A father walks into his son's bedroom while the kid's listening to music on headphones connected to his stereo.  The father walks in and shuts the music off, confronting his son with a cigar box containing the kid's dope stash.
"Who taught you how to do this?" the father asks testily.
The kid, ashamed at first, takes a beat, and then looks his father in the eyes and blurts out the line in anguish:
"You, all right?  I learned it by watching you!"
"Do as I Say, Not as I Do", huh?
Your responsibility as a parent is to raise a productive member of society into successful adulthood.  How do you use drugs yet tell your child it's wrong?
There's no more fundamental teaching than right and wrong.  Period.  Without evil, there can be no good.  And vice-versa.  The fine line.  Black and White.
Now that line between the black and white is bleeding into gray...we manage to reconcile behaviors that are wrong to our offspring, and the cycle then perpetuates. 
Everyone has vices.  Self included.  My wife and I enjoy a bottle of wine about once or twice a week.  Most often, we enjoy it after our daughter goes to bed for the night. 
But we also enjoy it responsibly.  I pointed this out to my young nephew, raised in a home with strong Christian values.  He pointed out to his Uncle Ken that drinking was a sin.
Is it, I said?
I patiently took out my Bible and pointed out several passages that involved the consumption of wine in a positive manner.  Then I pointed out the negative.  The difference was the effect produced by overconsumption.
He got the message.
I don't have to get on a soapbox and preach the difference between right and wrong.  The difference is whether we choose to embrace it or turn our backs to it in favor of living our lives 'our way'. 
You know what to do.
Do it.

NEXT WEEK:  Truth or Consequences