"Process is everything. We can only teach kindness kindly. We can only teach respect by being respectful. We can only teach politeness by being polite with our children. You can't say, 'You stupid idiot, I said to be polite!'" -- John Gottman
Children learn more from how we conduct ourselves with them than from what we talk about to them. Our actions and our words must be consistent. Children are very sensitive to phoniness. When our words and behavior don't match, our children will imitate how we act more often than following what we say.
