Earlier this week my wife and I were cleaning up after dinner in the kitchen. The kids were off doing their chores throughout the house. In that moment, I asked my wife, “Do you want to hear a new worship song I heard that I really like?” She gave her a assent so I told my pal Alexa to play the song. After the song was over, my wife said, “Great song!”
That was the end of the conversation about the music. At least I thought it was.
Fast forward to the next day. I walk into my daughter’s room and on her Alexa is the very song I had played for my wife downstairs. At some point, she must have heard me playing it to my wife, seen the song title, and started playing it on her Alexa device.
Parents, this is just one example of many that shows just how closely our kids are watching and listening to us. We are living models that our kids are watching and learning from. They are worse that Santa! They see us when we’re sleeping. They watch us when we’re awake. They know if we’ve been bad or good. So need I say? Be good for goodness sake!
Just through your everyday living, your kids are developing a framework for how to interact with other people. How to deal with stress. How to act in various situations. What is important. On and on it goes.
With that in mind, I challenge you, parents, to not waste the opportunity. You can model poorly, or you can model well. You can model integrity, uprightness, love, and compassion. Or you can model discord, hate, jealousy, hypocrisy, and selfishness. You can model what it means to love God and love the Bible, or you can model what it means to love sports and television. You can model how a husband and wife can love each other, or you can model how they cannot get along.
Will you be perfect? No. But even in your imperfection, you can model humility and forgiveness.
So go ahead, show your kids what God-fearing adults look like! Because even if you don’t realize it, they are watching.