Book Four - True Family
Chapter Nine - True Education for Children
Section 3. Parents Must First Set an Example

In order to educate their children, parents should first put their words into practice. They should set the example of being loyal to God's will. This way, they should create an atmosphere in which, whatever they say, their children can revere them without ever talking back. Otherwise, their children would not follow them. (1-268, 1970.6.1)

In order for this to happen, parents should give their children a heavenly education. In teaching their children, parents should first be exemplary. Before teaching their children to practice filial piety, they should first be children of filial piety. You yourselves must be sons and daughters of filial piety according to heavenly law so that the connection of heaven's tradition of filial piety can be established from there. Educate them to practice filial piety just as their parents practiced filial piety in the family and to he patriots just as their parents struggled for the nation even while being driven into desperate circumstances. (1970.3.17)

Parents do not make their children practice filial piety just by telling them to do so. Parents must have the ability to cause a heart of wanting to practice filial piety to spring up within their children. These things do not happen in one morning but after a long period of influence. What does it mean to exert influence? Parents should set the example in their daily lives for their children to follow their way. You should be experts in putting such things into practice. (29-9Z, 1970.2.25)

When teaching your children, do not just say, "Become great people" but rather, "Go such and such a way in order to become great people." Fathers must fulfill their responsibilities as fathers and elder siblings should fulfill their responsibilities as elders. In other words, by your becoming people who know how to discern the connection to walk the path of true men and women, and who do not deviate from heavenly law, don't you think that the path will emerge by which you can go through the principled course and become the citizens of the one nation? (Blessed Family - 1039)

What should parents do? They should teach their children in such a way that brothers and sisters can love each other just like their mother and father. At the same time, they should teach them, saying, "As we love the nation, you should also love the nation in this way." Then, they will not need any other education. When you pray ask God to make your children do it this way since you are doing it this way.

You can set your children up in such a position only after you have first set the standard. If you have stood in such a position, God will naturally lead your children in the same direction. Thus, if you fail to reverse the trend here, you will be called to account when you pass on to the spirit world. (4-103, 1963.11.1)

In your families, you should make your children think that their Mom and Dad are greater than any kings or queens in the world. Also, you should show them that their mother and father are close to each other in a way unprecedented in the world. You as blessed parents should establish such a tradition.

Furthermore, you should plant the tradition in the innermost core of your children so that they can say, "Our mother and father make us proud, more than anyone else in the world." If you look at parents in the secular world, they fight and make a big mess even when their children protest, crying, "Mother! Father! Why are you fighting?"

If your children, who have grown up in your family without tears, witness such sights in the secular world, they will feel, "Surely, our Mom and Dad are the best in the world! They are truly great and holy people!" To bring this about, you should set them an example. You should establish a parental bond through which you can receive adoration flowing out from the innermost core of your children's hearts and thereby establish family precepts and traditions implicitly. By doing this, their children in the next generation will say, "We will stand in the same position as our parents!" (23.184, 1969.5.18)