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?

Unless your child expresses ambition and drive from a very young age, your childs’ education IS important to you and the most compelling reason for this – you are not independently wealthy so you can’t afford lazy, uneducated kids. How do I know you’re not rich?

Rich people don’t read MouthyGirl. Chances are one out of every two of you reading this didn’t go to college, and if you did, you may not have gotten a degree. It is our job as parents to teach our children better than we know, guide them to lead a better life. How can you do that if you don’t start with their education?

If you don’t care about your kids’ education, they won’t either and the teacher can’t make them care, no matter how hard they try. What you’re left with is a child that is complacent about schoolwork, and not only school work – any hard work. Sure he might make the effort to pass just to keep from being held back, but the fundamentals aren’t there, nor is the work ethic that boss’s are looking for everywhere.

Why is this a problem? That child grows up with only a very basic skillset to get a job with and is competing with college graduates for jobs. Does that sound fair to you? For you and me, we can still get a job based on experience, selling ourselves and demonstrating what we know, our children will not be so lucky, at 30 I can tell you I have been passed up for many jobs because I don’t hold a degree, many of which I was capable of doing but didn’t have the degree to back me up. It is only going to get more difficult for people like me.

Being a parent means one thing first and foremost – IT AIN’T ALL ABOUT YOU ANYMORE. So why would you leave your child out their alone, with no one to care about their school work, work ethic, dreams and goals? I know it’s hard to be an active and attentive parent but believe me it’ll be worth it, before the dear hubby was around I was a single mom and even then I managed, so you have no excuse.

Are you involved in your kids’ school life?