Events over recent weeks have made it clear that how we interact with our children (be they skware pegs or neurptypical) and the way we interact with others, shapes the way our children interact with people in their world. This has nothing to do with being a single parent, working full time, having a nanny or being a stay at home parent – this is all about how we, or how the people who look after our children, treat them, talk to them and how they treat other people.

A prime example of this is how adults respect people around them. Take a parent whose child plays a sport at weekends. Their child is a goalie in the local football team. The team is OK, they win some matches, they lose others. Some children want to be professionals, others are there because they just enjoy the sport, and then there are some who are there because their parents wanted to be pro footballers. Think of the parent who wanted to be a pro footballer. This parent stands on the sidelines and criticises the other team members, and thinks they’re not good enough to play on the same team as their child. They think the only reason the opposition scored more goals is because the defence was rubbish. They also think the coaches don’t know what they’re doing because the team has lost matches this season – the coaches are parents too who have put themselves through the necessary training, and they volunteer their time for training sessions, matches and club meetings. The trouble is that the child has heard all the moaning and disrespectful talk, and is now picking on other team members and moaning about the coaches too. The child is becoming a disrespectful bully because that’s the behaviour they have seen in their parent. Even if the child had the potential to be the player the parent wants them to be, their lack of respect to other team members and coaches means that the likelihood of them becoming a professional player gets less and less.

However, the child that turns up every week, listens to the coaches, supports the other team members probably won’t become a pro player either (because the number who do is tiny), but they learn how to be a team player, they see how being respectful is important, and they learn how to earn respect from other team members and the coaches. They are learning life skills that will help them for the next 70+ years.

We need to look at how we are with our children. We need to listen to their questions and queries, however small and insignificant they may seem at the time. We need to show them that our love is not conditional on A grades (or 9s in the new system), or being picked for the school team, or the choir or having the lead part in the school play. They need to learn from us that all that matters is that they do their best on that day. We aren’t perfect all the time, and we must stop our children feeling they have to be. We are also allowed to have bad days, or sad days, or days where just being is hard work.

We also need to look at how we react to people around us – do we let a car pull out in front of us, do we put away our phones when someone is serving us (at the supermarket, cafe or anywhere), do we put away our phones when our children talk to us? Do we say please and thank you? Do we offer to take a trolley back for an older customer? Do we try to make the world a nicer place? If we don’t, our children probably won’t either.

We just need to be aware of what we are doing, as our children won’t always do what we say, but they will usually do what we do.