If one of your kids does something bad and another one tells you about it, don’t say, “Okay I’ll talk to him later.” Because parents get busy and distracted and they forget and the child might never get corrected. It’s very important to teach your kids now because we are just borrowing them from our Heavenly Father to prove that we can teach kids the right way. And they will turn out good or bad from what we teach them. Remember that now you may have jobs and classes and other things to do, but what you will have in heaven is your children and nothing else. So they will be what you spend your time with. The jobs will be forgotten. It is better to establish a good relationship with your kids by going on trips, picnics, camping, skiing, etc. so they know that home is a wonderful place where they can be loved.
Whenever something happens that shouldn’t (like there is a broken plate on the kitchen floor), and you ask everyone who did it and someone speaks up right away to say they did it, don’t get mad. In that situation there is no reason to be angry. In the first place, your child didn’t mean to do it. In the second place, he or she didn’t lie or wait until later to say it. Now if they did speak up right away, just have them clean up the dish. But if they don’t say it right away or lie and you find out later that it was that person, you can get mad. But it would be best if you wouldn’t be mad and just talk it over with the child and ask why he or she lied and see if they can do better the next time. If you do it this way, the other people in the family will see that each time they do something bad and are honest, it will be easier. If someone does lie, but later they come back to you and say they did it, don’t get mad because they are repenting. It took a lot of courage to tell you that and getting mad at them will just make it harder to tell you so. They might not even tell you the next time.