Your Children Are Watching You!

I was in San Francisco this summer with my son, Hansel (13). We parked our car by Ghirardelli Square and went for a walk. We bought some chocolates, walked through the art galleries and went back to our car a couple of hours later to realize our parking ticket was $ 16.00 dollars. My son quickly said: “Dad let me go back to the store and get our ticket validated so we don’t have to pay anything.” He promptly came back and told me that the purchase limit to get the ticket validated was $ 50.00 dollars (we had spend $ 34.00) but the cashier believed him and stamped it for him.

Hmmm… That troubled me! I could have gone back and embarrassed him but I decided to catch the moment as it was. So I kindly introduced the subject of honesty and the fact that I believed what he did was wrong. He immediately responded and told me he didn’t think so, because no one knew about it, and besides that, the business was making good money and they were charging too much for parking anyway. I pressed the point. He promptly reminded that the day before we had parked at a spot where the sign distinctively said parking was only allowed for patrons of a particular business. We instead went for a walk to another store. Wooww! His comment was followed by a very mature “ethical dilemma”… “Dad, how far do you go in trying to be honest before you are stupid?” It was a good chance for me to discuss the subject of honesty and lying in the frame of my own honest admission of wrong doing.

You see, he had watched my inconsistency. I had to acknowledge the truth of my own dishonesty and then I was able to move on with what I was trying to instill in him.

Here is the point. Children watch more than listening to parents! I found that to be true with my four kids. They watch every move I make and when I bring something out to their attention that I think is important they have an arsenal of reasons why that is not relevant. The reason? They know I am being inconsistent. When I press my point I usually find out that they are either twisting an incident or they are telling the truth about an inconsistent behavior on my part. If I am not ready to be honest with them I lose the moment forever!

Kids listen how we answer the phone when we tell a caller we are busy, or when we tell someone why we are late. Kids watch everything. They absorb information like sponges. Later on, when it’s correction time they know if you have the authority to correct them or not.

Perhaps one of the greatest conflicts parents of adolescents face is the “Do as I say, not as I do.” That is very often the root of conflict.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Who you are speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you say.” In a similar vein, Robert Fulghum warned parents: “Don’t worry that children never listen to you. Worry that they’re always watching you.”

It is a great responsibility to be parents wanting our children to be all we want them to be as we coach them to success. But one thing is for sure, wanting that success for them is not enough. Children mostly do what they see us doing not what we tell them to do.

One of the areas of great trouble in parenting is the state of our marriages. Parents often create an unintentional gap between their marriage and their parenting role. Biggest mistake parents could ever make. If your marriage is not a good one, it’s very difficult to teach kids good values. Why? They are watching your interactions with your spouse. Very often when I coach someone with poor or distorted values I come to find out that their early family life was full of inconsistencies. You are a parent trying to teach your kids good values and suddenly you divorce your spouse; you quit marriage after 15 years; you move on! Kids watch the breaking of that promise; the breaking of your commitment to stay married for life. It is very hard to come back to those kids and teach them about commitment and sticking by your promises when you have broken yours.

Kids mostly watch you when you are off-guard. You come home, drink a beer and sit down to watch TV. You think they are busy with their home work. They are watching you. You attempt to demonstrate virtues later on, but your silent behavior influences their behavior more than you think. Children notice how we handle ourselves and how we cope with stress, anger, good fortune and pain. They notice whether we’re accountable or make up excuses, whether we deal with or avoid our problems. Everything we say and do sends a message.

Here are some guidelines to make sure your life is influencing your kids in a positive way beyond your words and what you tell them is good for them:

1. Check your behavior for consistency when they are not around. This takes time and discipline. Assume they are watching you even when they are not.

2. When you deal with something like divorce make sure you are totally honest and acknowledge where you have failed and WHY the divorce happened by assuming responsibility for your part of the deal. 99% of parents fail on this one because most of the time divorce is a selfish excuse to get out of an uncomfortable relationship and the kids know it!!! But you owe them an honest, open forum on this matter. After all, they never deserve a divorce, they did not plan their arrival into the world and they are not responsible for your divorce. First thing you can do is to tell them, they don’t deserve it and they have nothing to do with it as you begin to open up. Research shows that children of divorce carry an unspoken guilt in their hearts thinking they are partly responsible for the braking of the family. Blaming your spouse is the lamest, most damaging way to explain divorce to a kid. As a matter of fact, if you want to lose your authority, leadership and parenting role forever with your kids, just go ahead and blame your spouse for the whole mess!

3. When you get caught in an inconsistency admit to it openly and change.

4. Periodically open up to your kids and tell them about your own struggles in life and how you deal with them. Learn to be ACCOUNTABLE to your own kids at their level of comprehension. Children are incredibly intuitive and they open up when parents share their feelings about their own failures and shortcomings. This is one of the best ways to teach them principles.

5. When they tell you about others’ inconsistencies don’t try to explain it away. Accept it, think about it and if there are real inconsistencies from a teacher or an authority figure admit to it and begin to explain to the child the reality of an imperfect world with imperfect people. People are inconsistent and that doesn’t mean you don’t owe them respect. But you can’t use this principle on yourself. It’s your responsibility as a parent to earn your own respect through consistency, honesty, and character.

If you want to help your children build the type of character you would be proud of, act as if they’re watching. And that simply means, developing your own character for their sake and the sake of your world around. Children respond the best to parents with character. They love honesty, openness and they are very sensitive to inconsistencies and “bullshit.” They don’t call it that… They just smell it miles away! If you think they are watching more than listening then pay attention, because they are!