J. C. Ryle Quotes

A lot of things I try to instill in my children comes off of what I've learned from my parents. First of all, you have to lead by example. You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them. So I try to be the best example I can be to them.

Your children will see what you're all about by what you live rather than what you say.

If children are expected to be honest, parents must be honest. If children are expected to be virtuous, parents must be virtuous. If you expect your children to be honorable, you must be honorable.

From where can your authority and license as a parent come from, when you who are old, do worse things?

What we are teaches the child far more than what we say, so we must be what we want our children to become.

Be what you wish your children to be. Parents have perpetuated by precept and example their own stamp of character to their posterity.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.

Instruction, and advice, and commands will profit little, unless they are backed up by the pattern of your own life. Your children will never believe you are in earnest, and really wish them to obey you, so long as your actions contradict your counsel... Think not your children will practise what they do not see you do. You are their model picture, and they will copy what you are... will seldom learn habits which they see you despise, or walk in paths in which you do not walk yourself.

You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them.

If you're asking your kids to exercise, then you better do it, too. Practice what you preach.

We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.

Parents must lead by example. Don't use the cliche; do as I say and not as I do. We are our children's first and most important role models.

I've learned something about kids - they don't do what you say; they do what you do.

It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for 'showing up' and embodying the message.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

I never asked my children to do something I didn't show them that I could also do.

Make sure that your children don't follow you if you go to sin.

Don't tell people how to live, demonstrate by example.

The great thing about my parents is they didn't preach anything they didn't practice.

You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.

I know from my own experience as a parent that parents probably teach most powerfully not through their words but through their deeds. And my parents taught me through the stories of their lives. And I don't take any credit for the things that they did or the things that they experienced, but they made a great impression on me.

Children need parents who model self-discipline rather than preach it. They learn from what their parents are actually willing to do; not from what they say they do.

I think as parents you want to at least try to provide a good example to your kids. So yeah, I feel like a complete hypocrite if I'm telling my son to try new things and not be afraid and I'm shying away from doing a dancing show for Pete's sake. On some level, you're at least being a good example for your kids.

We must become the people we want our children to be.