Walking the Talk

Our children are walking and talking representations of us, the parents. Since they spend most of their time with us and since we are the closest to them, they get used to our habits. Their body language, sleep pattern, social skills mostly shadow us. I always thought that bringing up a child in the best possible manner involves lots of reading, learning and understanding by the parents. But it is in fact quite simpler than all that. We have to set good examples. That is all it takes. At least in the formative years till they turn 5. For example, if I want my son to say thank you each time he receives something from someone, I go ahead and say thanks to that person. I do not ask him to tell thank you. When I respond with a "thank you", he learns much faster. He has been watching a lot of cartoons lately, and has gotten used to hitting people for fun. He thinks that they are bad when someone does not do something that he asks for. So the best way for me to deal with this is to make him busy with other activities. He does not have time to TV now. Even if he does, I turn on either Nat Geo or Animal Planet. He enjoys watching animals now. He has completely stopped asking for cartoons. 
His current craze is play-doh, its basically clay in different colors and it comes with different forms of molds. He enjoys playing with it after he comes back from play school. I make sure that I put all of his play things back inside the his big box of play things. After a couple of days, he started helping me with cleaning up after he is done and now he does it himself. So as much as we tell and teach our children to be good, we need to show how its done. That is the one way which has worked for me. Enjoy parenting..