This study suggests that if you want your children…

This study suggests that if you want your children to adopt high self-reward standards, it's a good idea to guide them to adopt those standards and also model them in your own behavior. If you aren't consistent and are tough on your children but lenient with yourself, there is a good chance they'll adopt the self-reward standards you modeled, not the ones you imposed on them.

— from Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting) · Marshmallow Test: Why Self-Control is the Engine of Success by Walter Mischel

In the book

And when you must give correction, borrow the gentlest tool I know: lead with love and proportion — ninety-nine percent of what you do is right; may I offer you the one percent? — so that feedback lands inside a warm, trusting loop rather than as an attack. Teach. Remember that you teach far more by your reactions than by your lectures, and that children absorb the standards you model, not the ones you merely impose — so if you are tough on them but easy on yourself, it is the leniency they will learn. Be deliberate about whom you expose them to, because the people in a child's orbit shape them as much as anything you say; I was always careful about the friends I let mine keep. […] Discipline as mercy, not anger. Be the real world's kind proxy; give them a few firm rules so they are welcome everywhere; and let them fail safely rather than smothering their competence. Teach by living it. Model the values you want rather than imposing them; mind whom you expose them to; raise givers, not takers, and practice it together. Guard the time. Set aside immovable weekly family time, eat together with full attention, and keep a ritual that carries the love. — Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)

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