Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund, captures it succinctly:
"Parents are their children's most important teachers and mentors, and they bear primary responsibility for nurturing their sons and daughters while keeping them safe. Yet parenting is one of the most undervalued and least prepared for roles in America." (All Parents Can Use Support)Why are parents so important?
The sustained influence of parents is hard to overestimate. If one good (or bad) teacher can leave an impression on us from a single course or school year, how much more greater is the impact of daily influence and instruction from parents!
If a person wants to apprentice to a master in a particular field, from sports to the fine arts, the apprentice seeks to maximize the time that they spend in the presence of the master. In the apprenticeship of being human, parents play the role of the master teacher, and children of the apprentices. It is a continual mentoring relationship that happens regardless of the diligence with which either master or apprentice engages the task. And this is precisely the nature of its power.
The question is not whether you are your child's most important teacher and mentor, but how you are fulfilling those responsibilities.
