by Sean Curtis

Created on: March 26, 2008

Remember when your parents said, "You'll understand when you get older." You huffed and puffed and stomped to your room, certain you'd never understand and swearing up and down you won't be like them. While it pains me to admit it, they were right on about ninety-five percent of those arguments.

The good and bad news is that inevitably we turn into our parents. It's bad news because we always said we wouldn't do that. Then we start using their phrases, agreeing with their politics, and (truly the scariest thing) laughing at their jokes. Hopefully, you have good, strong, loving parents, so in that sense, it's also good news.

Every year, psychologists, scientists, and specialists in childhood development learn more about how parents shape children from a very young age. Experts say that something as simple as the manner in which our parents attended to us while we cried in our crib could have lasting effects on development. Of course, the experts tend to disagree on which approach to take, so obviously this is not an exact science. However, it is clear that our parent's behavior becomes woven into the fabric of who we are and who we grow up to be.

Probably more than anything else, the morals we learn from our parents stick with us. Studies widely show that adults tend to raise their children the way they were raised themselves. Naturally, there are many exceptions to this. Some children rebel against their parents' morals, and some rebel against their parents' lack of morals. But if you grow up in a loving household, odds are your going to care for your children with the same affection.

This is why parents must be conscious of their actions. Children are highly-absorbing little sponges. They soak up everything they see. Children not only pick up positive morals and behaviors from their parents, rest assured they'll pick up negative ones even faster. The danger for parents is that they will have a very difficult time disciplining a child for a behavior that they themselves possess. If they do, the child will likely see them as hypocritical, and the parents could lose their ability to control the child.

For the most part, we tend to grow into our parents' shoes. This isn't such a bad thing if you respect and love your parents. Of course, we also try to improve on the methods they used that we still disagree with. In other words, it's a constant struggle to perfect the art of raising a child. Hopefully our children will do the same for theirs. As long as the moral compass is firmly in place, the rest should fall into place.

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