Your children are watching everything and learning from most of it.

They are not listening to your lectures as much as they are reading your life. They absorb how you handle disappointment. They study how you treat people who cannot help you.

They notice whether your words and your actions are aligned. The most powerful parenting tool is not what you say to your children. It is who you are in front of them.

They will not remember most of the advice. They will remember what they felt in your presence — and they will carry that feeling into how they parent their own children.