I heard my children upstairs yelling at one another. I listened for a moment hoping they would stop, but they didn’t. Slowly, I walked to the bottom of the stairs and yelled, “We don’t yell in this house.” As soon as I said it, I realized what I had done. I yelled that we don’t yell. I did the very thing I was telling them to stop doing.

I think that we, as parents, do this too often. You know, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

• We tell our children to be honest and tell the truth and then lie to them by saying we’re “too busy” when, in fact, we’re tired and want to rest.
• We tell our children to avoid drugs and alcohol while we smoke cigarettes and get a “buzz” on Friday night.
• We tell our children to speak respectfully of others, then complain about our boss, maybe even calling him or her a few choice names.

You get the idea. We, as parents, have to learn to “walk the talk” if we want our children to grow a stronger “moral self.” In fact, a study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development (2025) found a strong association between our children’s moral lives and the way in which we “walked” in our relationship with them. Specifically, this study found that parental warmth “played a foundational role in shaping our children’s moral self.” It even functioned as a buffer against the typical “self-critical decline” of middle school age children, “reinforcing their internalization of moral values, providing consistent support, and affirming their self-worth.” The authors of the study concluded that “parents act as moral role models for their children, influencing not only how children internalize moral values but also how they navigate moral decisions over time. By consistently demonstrating empathy, fairness, and moral reasoning, parents can support children’s ongoing moral self-development, ensuring these values remain central even as external influences such as peers and societal norms, become more prominent in later developmental stages.” 

That sounds like something I want to provide for my children, don’t you? We want to be a moral role model that helps our children internalize positive moral values and stand against the pressures of this age to maintain those positive values as they mature. For that to happen most effectively, we need to “walk the talk.” We must walk the moral pathway lined with “empathy, fairness, and moral reasoning over time.”

Of course, we are not perfect. We will make mistakes. There will be times when we fall short of our moral values. We might yell at them to stop yelling, like I did. But when we admit our shortcomings, we express an important value. When they see us attempting to make changes, we model a crucial moral value. When we apologize for momentary, temporary slip-ups, we reveal an important moral value. And, in each instance, we walk the talk.