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That’s not to say we can’t break a generational cycle or that our children have no choice in the matter or even that we are 100 percent responsible for their behavior. But we might be more effective as parents if we spent half the energy we spent on our children’s behavior onto our own. Here are five specific underlying reasons why the best thing you can do for your kids is to be the kind of people you want them to be.

• Seeing is believing. Maybe optimism can trump pessimism. Maybe taking smart risks is worthwhile. And maybe there is a promise land. But if you’ve never seen it, possibilities remain folklore, not reality. The self-fulfilling prophecy about seeing and believing is that believing is also seeing. When a child sees firsthand, up close and personal, that optimism can thrive even in adverse conditions, or that hard work and ambition does pay off, our kids are more likely to manifest their preconceived notions about what they believe to be true into their own reality.

• Kids need a map and a guide. The best step-by-step manual we can provide our children on how to live fruitful, empowering and fulfilling lives is to show them through our own. Take healthy living, for example. It’s not enough to tell our children, be healthier than us. There’s a lot that goes into it than just simple exercise, for instance. They need to learn how to eat, how to cook, how to exercise, where to shop for healthy foods, how to read the ingredients, when to indulge and when not to and so on. They need a map and a guide to help them navigate.

• Parents create norms. Ever consider where your idea of “normal” comes from? More often than not, they come from our upbringing. If our parents never exercised, we might consider those gym rats to be exercise freaks. But on the other hand, if our parents had the habit of riding bikes to work or exercising three times a week, lack of exercise might be considered abnormal. Parents often set the benchmark for what is normal in their kids’ lives.

• The power of repetition. Yes, our children look up to us. But they are also exposed to us more than they are to anybody else. The power of repetition says that the more they see something, the more they become it.

• Kids take pride in their parents too. Why do we take pride in our offspring? Is it not, at least in part, because our children reflect us? Well, when parents accomplish something, it fills something in our kids too. They take pride and ownership in us too, the way we do in them. They think I can do it too because my mom or dad did. Seeing mom or dad accomplish something is tremendously empowering for our kids.

Deborah Song