The teachers in the school will do something toward educating your children, but your example will do more than can be accomplished by any other means. Your conversation, the way in which you manage your business matters, the likes and dislikes to which you give expression, all help in molding the character. The kindly disposition, the self-control, the self-possession, the courtesy your child sees in you, will be daily lessons to him. Like time, this education is ever going on, and the tendency of this everyday school should be to make your child what he ought to be. (CG 216.1) MC VC

Be careful that you are not rude to your children.... Require obedience, and do not allow yourself to speak carelessly to your children, because your manners and your words are their lesson book. Help them gently, tenderly over this period of their life. Let the sunshine of your presence make sunshine in their hearts. These growing boys and girls feel very sensitive, and by roughness you may mar their whole life. Be careful, mothers; never scold, for that never helps. (CG 216.2) MC VC

Parents to Be Patterns of Self-control—Children should be kept as free from excitement as possible; therefore the mother must be calm and unhurried, free from all excitement and nervous haste. This is a school of discipline to herself as well as to the child. While teaching the little ones the lesson of self-denial, she is educating herself to be a pattern to her children. While with tender interest she is working the soil of their hearts, that she may subdue the natural sinful inclinations, she is cultivating in her own words and in her own deportment the graces of the Spirit. (CG 216.3) MC VC