The theory that children are shaped, for life, in the first 5 years of their small lives has been proven to be true.
The effect of how they are loved, taught, held, or hurt can be found in the hallways of our schools, every day.
This essay is one of the best I have seen on the power for good or evil that all adults but especially parents hold when it comes to their children.All adults have the power to kill a small child’s life before it ever begins. Killing doesn’t mean murdering the body; it means murdering the soul, the spirit and the mind of the child before the child ever has a chance to live and love in our world.
This post clearly states the case for all of us to make the effort to make our children’s lives safe and happy places for them to live, learn and love. Please read it. Please share it. Please try to think about it before you choose (and it is a choice, folks) to snap at your child, to slap your child with words or your hand, to do damage to your child that lives inside of them, forever.
My Dad used to tell me this when I started dating. “Don’t listen to what they (boys) say; watch what they do.” This same perspective is what your kids, our kids do every day. They do NOT do what we say…they do what we do.
Please try to consider the fragility of these wonderful, bright shiny children who arrive so eager, so willing to learn and think about what you teach them.
Write On Target 
Thank you sincerely, for sharing my post. It is a heart-felt candle, offered up in love born of a lifetime of trial and error in rearing my own daughters and touching the lives of many less fortunate who entered my home as foster children. Each one is in my heart and each one taught me many important life lessons.
I am grateful that you took the time and energy to share such a wonderful and eye-opening point of view. I work in a school now and I see the opportunities to help and the opportunities that are not taken. I have a daughter and 3 grandchildren and I have always been so careful to preserve their dignity at the same time I hold them accountable for their actions. It’s not hard but it does require that you pause, for just a moment, before you launch into something that might wound them in ways you just cannot imagine. Thank you for sharing.
Hopefully, i can return the favor! Make no mistake, this is not my last post.