What Are We Teaching Our Children?

As a mother and grandmother I have learned over the years that children have an uncanny way of remembering everything they see and hear while growing up. They are in a sense little computers archiving everything that goes on around them.
What we do and say somehow forever ingrains in their memories and it is those memories that help create and shape the adult.

So, what are we teaching our children?
Sometimes it is the simple things that we as adults and parents overlook in what it is we wish our children to learn.
For example we all have tried to teach our children to look both ways when crossing the street for obvious safety reasons but somehow that message gets lost in the shuffle. Why? Let me ask you this?

When you take your children shopping or out running errands do you engrave in their minds to cross the street at crosswalks? Or do you when in a hurry cut across the street holding your child's hand? Think from a child's point of view of what they just learned. We are all guilty of the simple act of jaywalking. The problem arises when we try to teach our children to look both ways and cross at the cross walk when we ourselves ignore our own words while towing our child by hand.
I recently watched a situation regarding this subject and this is how it unfolded.

A mother had her child of approximately 6 years of age in tow and ran across the center of the street to her parked car. She apparently had forgotten something in the car and went back to retrieve it. When she closed the car door after retrieving what it was she needed the child then darted across the main street by himself nearly get hit by a car. The mother then scolded the child. What we don't realize as adults and parents is that children will mimic what they have been taught.
That little boy only did what his mother had taught him.

My viewpoint on these matters is not to point fingers and judge for we all try to do what is best for our children. I just notice that sometimes we all forget in the hustle and bustle of life that our children literally follow our lead and that simply crossing the street is a lesson remembered and learned by our children.