What qualities do you desire for your son or daughter’s future spouses to possess? For example, honesty, love, integrity, faithfulness, spirituality. These are attributes any parent would wish their future son or daughter-in-law to hold.
The only question now is, do you display those traits yourself? For example, do your children see you treating your wife or husband in that manner?
As mentioned in other blogs, our children learn from our lifelong examples and will look for the same behaviors in their lives. For example, if a man treats his wife with compassion and honesty and puts her needs ahead of his, their daughter will expect the same things in her future relationships.
She would do this not because she has been instructed to do so; instead, she has witnessed her mother being treated in this manner all her life.
The daughter hasn’t experienced anything different, and any lesser behaviors would not be acceptable to her.
If you want your children to have a happy marriage, you have one also. If you want your children to be responsible, you are responsible also.
“Little children, we must stop expressing love merely by our words and manner of speech; we must also love in action and truth.” (1st John 3:18)
Once again, I say our children follow our lead. We can’t teach them any traits we don’t possess ourselves.