 Remember that children are mirrors; they reflect back to us everything we say and do. It is known that 95% of everything children learn, they learn from what is modeled for them. And only 5% of all they learn is from direct instruction. Everything we experience, every word we hear, is permanently recorded in our subconscious. We are being role models for the children. Keep in mind that children are like tape recorders, and what we speak is what we teach. All the children record every word we ever say to them or in front of them. The language children grow up hearing is the language they will speak.
Often we make the mistake of thinking that since children are smaller than we are and have less information and experience than we do, that they don't have all the same feelings we do. But they do. Keep in mind that the same kind of treatment that would embarrass, humiliate or hurt us, embarrasses, humiliates and hurts children. Our thinking shuts down, when human beings are being hurt emotionally. We can not learn, when our thinking is shut down, we can only record. If adults try to "teach" children by lecturing, criticizing, shaming, ridiculing, giving orders, screaming, threatening and hitting, it shuts down their thinking so they can't learn what the adult intended to teach them to do or not to do; they can only record what is being modeled.
The most common criticism of young people these days is, "they don't treat anyone or anything with respect." In fact, adults often try to teach children to be respectful by treating them disrespectfully. Normally, children learn respect or disrespect from how we treat them and how we treat each other. Children learn disrespect, when they live with disrespect. Adults can teach respect only by modeling treating each other with respect and by giving children the same respect we expect.
Most adults carry "recordings" of disrespect we recorded when we were children, since children have long been treated as second class citizens, as "less than". When children's behavior challenges us, it pushes our recording's play button and we find ourselves saying the very things that were said to us as children. Has any parent not had the experience of hearing their parents' words coming out of their own mouths now that they are parents? Most disrespectful responses are so automatic, we have already said them before we even realize what we've said.
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