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Comment by seb1204 | Hacker News Reader

Compassion, respect for all living things no matter the colour or gender, how to live healthy and physically active, financial literacy. Most of these things have a huge role model part. Don't give him a screen mounted to the stroller.

Remember that while still being unborn the child will get acquainted with you voice and time if voice. Once born he will observe you and how you conduct yourself from very early on; how you treat others, how you swear, how you treat your wife, and nowadays your device pickup habits too.

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you cant teach these, the kid will naturally pick up and learn from parents and the environment.

so the best way to teach your kids is to teach yourself to be a better person

>you cant teach these,

you can absolutely teach those

regardless of how you teach them, the kids will grow up just like their parents

parents are a huge factor, yes, but what you've said is not an absolute.

my dad was an abusive alcoholic. i have never laid a hand on my kids. i am not just like my dad.

I think "exactly like their parents" and "exactly opposite their parents" are indeed the two most likely outcomes.

(And congratulations on breaking the cycle. It's not easy.)

That's not an absolute rule, of course...

Religions lose half their members every generation, I believe the evidence is robust kids can pick a different path than their parents. You can guide, support, and nurture, but their personality is theirs once they reach escape velocity. Empathy and curiosity is brain structure though (the amygdala, broadly speaking).

Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916273 - November 2025 (1 comment)

Catholic Schools and Weekly Mass Aren’t Solving the Retention Crisis - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/catholic-schools-and-w... - October 15th, 2026 (“Just 58% of People Raised Catholic Are Still Catholic”)

The LDS Church Has a Retention Problem - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-lds-church-has-a-r... - August 6th, 2026 (“Just a bare majority of kids raised LDS are still LDS as adults (54%)“)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48634883 (additional citations)

(parent)

… but you can’t force them to learn. Explicit instruction that isn’t backed by modeled behavior isn’t going to be very effective, IMO.

right. "teaching" isn't restricted solely to explicit instruction.

At this stage, I feel kids learn more in their environments than their parents...

Behavior learnt from school is exhausting me.

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