There are some very basic parenting laws that we all know and we all try to get our kids to follow. They involve hard work, sportsmanship, effort, manners, respect, and boundaries. You know the ones; they’re the basic rules that every parent knows.
There are a million others that we believe are essential to growing up. Some have become clichés, others are simple truisms, but they got that way because we have found virtue in repeating them, day after day, child after child, generation after generation. What we think less about is whether we’re actually following those rules ourselves, whether we are abiding by the laws we seek to enforce. As the billionaire Charles Koch once explained of the main lesson he learned from his father’s very hands-on parenting: you can’t lecture your kids on anything you don’t live up to.
You can’t tell your kids to respect others and then talk rudely to a customer service representative on the phone. You can’t tell them that it’s important to find and follow their passion and meanwhile work their entire childhood at a job that pays well but makes you miserable. You can’t tell them that family is important if your actions don’t show it.
You can’t lecture your kids. You have to live up to the lessons you want them to learn.