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Habits: Teaching Kids Good Habits Should be a Priority

Posted on June 6, 2012


Old habits die hard.

Bad habits are hard to break.

Good habits can be life-savers.

If you learn to brush your teeth three times a day, the chances that your teeth fall out of your mouth decline precipitously.

If you get in the habit of having a beer before you go to school every morning, you probably aren’t going to be graduating from college.

Habits are contagious.

Studies show that if you are around a bunch of people who have the habit of working out and eating healthy, you are much more likely to do the same.

On the other hand, if you hang out with folks who think that a light lunch is two Big Macs, you are either hanging out with the football team or a bunch of really fat people.

Teaching good habits should be the focus of our public school system.

But good habits can’t be taught by teachers alone.

Most habits are taught by parents.

I bet you that if you have classroom of kids with good habits and a bad teacher and you pit them against a classroom of kids with bad habits and a good teacher, the kids with good habits would score higher on test scores.

Sure, kids learn from their teacher, but they learn a lot more from their classmates.

Kids who learn the value of reading from their parents are much more likely to succeed than kids who learn the value of turning on the television.

While I don’t think that parents should be mandated by the federal government to inspire their kids to read at night, brush their teeth, eat their vegetables, say please and thank you, make their bed and chew with their mouths closed, those kinds of good habits should be strongly encouraged.

We don’t teach good habits any more.  We should make it a priority.

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