Children learn what we teach them (profound I know!)

So I'm straightening up the house a little before my hunny gets home and I pick up two pairs of my princess' shoes out of my bathroom and another pair in my bedroom.  This is AFTER asking her to pick up a pair out of the living room and dining room already, so needless to say I'm a little frustrated at this point.  As I make the trip from my bedroom to hers to put her shoes away, I discover two pair of my own shoes in my bedroom floor, and three more pair in the living room floor!  Ummm I think I may have found the culprit to our shoe problem!

My sweet girl has learned that it is acceptable to leave her shoes laying around the house because for most every day of her almost 4 year stay here in our humble abode, she has seen my shoes laying around the house!  This is a simple and fairly benign issue, but it points to a more profound truth.  Our children learn exactly what we teach them, weather it is leaving footwear in the walkway of our home, or what is appropriate to say, do, watch, sing... anything.  I was raised in a "do what I say and not what I do" home and know how I used to feel when I was told to stay home and be "good" when the adults would go out to bars and drink themselves into a stupor.  I could only think of how hypocritical that was, even before I knew what that word meant. 

I have made it a point in my daughters life, I do not watch television shows that she is not allowed to watch with me, I do not listen to songs that she cannot perform the lyrics into her pretend microphone... verbatim, and I do not say words that she cannot repeat back to me.  Not that I do not slip up from time to time, as a matter of fact last night I said the phrase "shut your mouth" and my princess in turn quickly reminded me "WE DON'T SAY THAT!"   But instead of saying those words I heard so many times growing up.... Do what I say, not what I do, I simply told her that she was right and I should not have said that.  (nothing like a 4 year old to keep you on track!)

So the moral of the story, weather it is putting your belongings where they go, watching tv shows, the language you choose to use, or any other issue that involves the training of our children; WE are responsible for everything they learn.... right or wrong!

Proverbs 22:6  Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Be blessed sweet friends!