Your kids are watching you right now. I don’t mean the obvious stuff, I mean everything. The way you handle disappointment. How you treat people when you think no one’s looking. The gap between what you say and what you actually do.
This hit me early. Growing up, I was a weird kid who didn’t listen to people’s words. Instead, I watched what they did. While other children followed instructions, I studied contradictions. Their body language told different stories from their words. Actions betrayed stated principles everywhere I looked.
I developed this strange habit, like a court judging by the standard of “a reasonable person”, I applied the same philosophy as a child. Words meant nothing to me. Actions revealed everything. This approach has never let me down.
I’m one of those people who go against the grain. I’m extremely science-based, and I have been from a young age. What people say versus what they actually do can be completely different. Actions speak louder than words, and your kids are watching those actions much more than you realise.
The science backs this up completely. Albert Bandura’s research showed that children learn behaviours, attitudes, and values through watching others, particularly parents. Multiple studies prove children mimic what they observe in language use, emotional responses, and moral decision-making. It’s not theoretical. It’s a documented fact in developmental psychology.
But let me tell you why this matters through my own story.
I was born in East London. Like many African parents in the 1970s and early 1980s, my parents sent me back to Ghana to learn the language and culture when I was two. I spent eight years there, mainly with my uncle and aunt.
My uncle barely spoke to teach; his actions did the speaking for him. I watched him constantly, wanting to copy whatever he was doing. He was incredibly hardworking and never complained; he just got on with things. I guess that’s where I learned my work ethic, not from lectures about hard work but from watching someone live it daily.
When I returned to the UK at age ten, I found these two incredible humans: my mother and father. I call them my GOAT parents. Suddenly, I was watching these two role models and realising how special they were at age ten.
My mother had this boundless love. She bankrupted herself helping others. She always supported family members coming to the UK and paid for other people’s children’s education in Ghana. Even when I was in Ghana, she worked two to three jobs just to send money for me, my sister, and her own sister’s children.
My mum never told me what she was doing, so we never really understood it. She never complained, never asked for anything in return. I just watched her give constantly. Your kids are watching that same selflessness or self-interest in your daily choices.
Then there’s my dad, the dude. He’s not as empathetic as my mum, but principle-oriented. He’ll cut off his nose to spite his face and stick by his values. These principles aren’t born from arrogance or certainty. They come from something deeper, what he believes the world or religion teaches us about right and wrong.
Watching these two humans eliminated any need for external role models. Musicians, sportsmen, and movie stars never held a candle to my GOAT parents. Why? Because my parents actually did what they said. They lived their values, not just preached them. Did they get it right all the time? Absolutely not, but their actions were worthwhile.
This shaped everything about how I approach parenting now with my three children. I don’t try to please them. I try to set an example. I want them to look back years from now and think, “Oh, this dude was doing this for good reasons,” even if they don’t understand my decisions right now.
Some years back, the BBC interviewed CEOs about success factors. I can’t remember his name for my life. I think he was American and ran an established company. They asked how he’d been so successful, and his answer stuck with me:
Parenting is possibly the hardest, most challenging job ever, and that prepped me for being a CEO. You’re dealing with conflict resolution, people with different emotional needs, constant problem-solving. Just when you think something’s resolved, it changes. And it keeps changing as children grow, not just by years, but by months.
This CEO understood something crucial: parenting skills transfer directly to leadership. The adaptability, empathy, and resilience you develop while raising children prove invaluable everywhere else. Your kids are watching how you handle these challenges, learning leadership skills from your example.
Here’s what children actually absorb when they’re watching you:
- Modelling Behaviour: Children are like sponges, picking up how you handle everyday situations. They learn more from consistent actions than from instructions. Showing respect, patience, and integrity creates a living blueprint they follow.
- Positive Influence: Your behaviour ripples outward, affecting your children, wider family, and community. When you embody kindness, empathy, and hard work, you set standards others naturally copy.
- Helping Others: Kids who see parents supporting others, through community service, helping family members, or simple acts of kindness, develop stronger empathy and a willingness to help. They learn that reaching out is normal human behaviour.
- Absorbing Attitudes: Children mirror the emotional climate you create. They adopt similar mindsets and approach life with optimism, curiosity, and resilience. Negative attitudes transfer just as easily, so the atmosphere at home matters enormously.
- Expressing Gratitude: When you focus on what you have and express appreciation regularly, children learn the same approach. This creates more harmonious family environments and builds lifelong emotional resilience.
- Generational Wisdom: Children raised with strong values become parents who pass on those same principles. Each generation builds on the previous one’s strengths, creating positive cycles.
- Relationship Reality: Demonstrating that relationships require work, communication, and patience helps children understand partnership realities. They develop realistic expectations and skills for their own future relationships.
- Consistency and Trust: Kids notice when actions align with words. This consistency builds trust and provides stable frameworks for developing into confident, principled adults.
- Constant Observation: Your kids are watching always, even when you think they’re not paying attention. This awareness should remind you to act intentionally, knowing you’re shaping their worldview.
Parenting is genuinely one of the most challenging roles out there. It involves constant adaptation, immense responsibility, and the pressure of shaping another human being. Balancing guidance, support, discipline, and being a role model, no manual exists for this complexity.
The responsibility feels overwhelming until you realise something powerful: you don’t need perfect words or elaborate explanations. You need authentic actions reflecting your deepest values. Children forgive mistakes. They struggle with the systematic manipulation and hypocrisy they observe daily.
My story might sound incredible, but it demonstrates how powerful parental influence is. My parents’ values clearly shaped my principles and approach to life. Their legacy lives on how I approach everything: work, relationships, and parenting.
Your kids are watching everything you do right now. Make it worth watching. Live the values you want them to inherit. Show them through actions what integrity, love, and authenticity look like in practice.
Your authentic example remains the most powerful teacher in our world, filled with mixed messages and competing influences. Children see through facades, notice contradictions, and remember patterns. Give them something genuine to follow.
They deserve nothing less than your absolute commitment to being the person you hope they’ll become. Their role model is in your household!