Life Lessons From Parenting

Your kids take more from you than just your energy and your patience. They take your advice (they do, even if it takes them years to actually use it) and they take your example and learn to live by it. The things you do resonate with them. Even the things you don’t know you do make a huge impact on the way your children live their life. The life lessons you teach your kids don’t have to be monumental; sometimes the smallest things make the biggest difference. Here are a few little life lessons that your kids will carry with them forever.

For the Love of Sports

Every kid needs a team to love and a team to hate. It doesn’t matter if they have no idea why they love or hate that team just that they do. When mom and dad pass down their love/hate relationships with sports teams their kids are being provided with memories that are fun, happy and carefree. They’ll grow up wanting to share their love of a particular team with their own kids, creating a type of family heirloom.

A Favorite Quote

When you think about your childhood you may remember your mom, dad or grandparent saying something on a regular basis. These little quotes or simple lines are ones that your kids will remember for a lifetime, because they hear it on a regular basis. They will say it to their kids, who will say it to their grandkids and they will always think fondly of you when they say it.

Youthful Stories

There is a time and a place for everything. The time you borrowed your parents car without their consent and accidentally ran into a stop sign while trying to figure out how to drive a manual and then pretended like the neighbor’s kid hit it while playing baseball probably isn’t the best story to tell your 14-year-old over Thanksgiving dinner, but hearing that you weren’t perfect is good for your kids. They see you on a pedestal, which makes them feel more pressure to be perfect. Knowing that you made mistakes and still managed to survive embarrassment and the pain of being grounded through your junior prom is the kind of stuff they need to know.

Enjoyment

Your kids will remember being punished and they will remember the times you lost your patience with them. They will also remember days at the ball park, family vacations and the days when mom was out dad let the kids eat oreo cookies and chocolate syrup for dinner. They’ll remember the fun you had and they’ll want their own kids to have fond memories of them in the same manner.