The most important things you can teach your child, you can only teach by example. A work ethic for example, your children watch you far more carefully than you can imagine and expect you to be their model. Are you aware of the eyes upon you? Do you hear yourself through your children’s mouths, isn’t it apparent that they’re watching and listening…keenly?
So go to work when you’re not sick, be nice to your coworkers and work hard. Earn praise by doing a good job and tell your family about it. Tell your family about nice things you do at work for others so that they can learn it’s good to be nice to people, always. Tell them about hard times at work, you are only human, your kids know that, show them how to bounce back. We all strive for something, our kids will learn what that is, make it the right things for them to learn.
You’ll know when it’s appropriate to discuss work ethic with your child. You can’t live by “do as I say, not as I do” it’s an appalling and horrible precedent to set. When you work hard and you do a good job you will excel and be rewarded; have high expectations of yourself and your children will learn how to do the same. Isn’t that the best legacy that you can leave?
You can do nothing more important in your life than to raise children that can go out into the world, take care of themselves and provide for themselves, and hopefully have a loving family of their own some day. You have to set the example; if you fall down on the job they will never forget it.
It’s a delicate balance, but as I am prone to say, if you know your child, you know what they still need to learn. You are the Chief Operating Officer of your home, you have to manage everything within it, who does what and when. That is your job, the one outside the home if you have one is secondary to the first. These children will be the future leaders of our companies, health and welfare programs, universities and political activists, if we do not have high expectations of them, what can our country expect from them? The world? How productive will your children be if their example is not?
Are you the type of person you would want your child to be?
