Growing Up in a Nurturing Home

All children model some of their parent's behavior. Even as they grow up and develop their own personality, their parent's bad habits will be ingrained in their thinking. This could take decades to unravel.
Watching their parents smoke, overeat, drive carelessly, be abusive instead of loving, toward one another and them.
Either discreetly or openly, their parents criticize, put down, or even threaten members of any different group which they consider hostile or inferior.

All this is stored in their memory, and affects how they deal with life's problems. If they learned to avoid confrontation at all costs to keep peace in the family, and not to offend anyone, it will be difficult to undo as they get older.
This constant need to keep their emotions in check will often promote stress. Stress that has to escape somehow, usually in the form of bad habits. Those bad habits will often become unhealthy habits, if we let them.

Someday, some event, or series of events in our life will make us stop, and take a good look at how our bad habits are damaging us. The illness or death of a parent, particularly the one who was plagued with bad habits, the same ones we picked up, is often a wake-up call. It screams to our soul, warning us that we are on the same path, and our life will be cut short.

If you are smoking, ask yourself what drives you to smoke. Is it to fit in, relieve stress or guilt, or something else? If you are overeating, are you doing it to get attention by people feeling sorry for you? You must assess what drives you to do it. Only then will real change happen in your life.

If you are often driving recklessly, or above the speed limit, stop and think of the emotional damage it's causing you and your family. Tragic accidents can happen in an instant. In an instant, your entire family could be ruined, either temporarily by your hospitalization, or permanently by having lost you, the glue that kept it all together.

Spare the stress and criticism, and stock your home environment with plenty of love and praise.