Parents set examples to their children. Mom and dad haveto show respect to each other. If there is no respect between them, how canthey expect any respect from children?
To effectively educate children, parents' reputation andimage may play an important role. If parents always argue in front of kids,the kids can be confused. With love to both mom and dad, it makes very hard for themto judge who is right who is wrong. In some cases, kids’ respect to parents canbe greatly reduced. If parents do not have enough respect in their children’sheart, how can they expect children to listen to them on important issues?
My husband and I have different opinions on many differentissues, especially in the area of children’s education. For some topics, we arenever able to convince each other. But in front of our children, we are united.When the kids try to find a way out between dad and mom, they have littlechance to win. When different opinion occurs, we try to discuss after the factwithout the children’s presence. One day, my husband and son were playingtennis. Father wanted to see big progress and kept pointing out son’sproblems. Seeing my son’s enthusiasm to the tennis was dropping, I saidnothing. A short discussion was held between us in the evening. The next day,my son reported to me that he won a game with dad. My husband later told me,there were many times the words had came to his mouth, but when he thoughtabout our conversation about “ less negative comments”, he swallowed them.
We are not only protecting each other’s authority, but alsoplanting respect into children’s heart. We intentionally direct our children torecognize our strength and use ourselves to teach kids. For example, when myhusband had to stay late on his job, I would point out to my children: See howmuch effort your dad put into his work? Hard work is one of the best roadleading one to success.”
