Setting an example for your children is the best way to teach them the core values and behaviors you want them to adopt eventually as adults. No matter how much you talk to them or give good advice, children are most likely to emulate what they see you doing in your day-to-day life as they grow older. Here are some ways to set a good example as someone who takes proper care of things, including your possessions and your body.

Follow The Rules or Guidelines

With around 6 million car accidents happening around the country every year, it’s easy to end up in a collision even if you don’t do anything to cause one. Be sure to follow the speed limit and posted signs to avoid an accident. If you are in an accident and your children are in the vehicle with you, remember that they are watching your example to determine the way to react in a stressful situation. Stay calm and communicate the necessary information to the other person without being aggressive, loud, or using obscene language. By staying calm at the moment and acting reasonably towards the other person, you’ll be setting an example that your children will look back on and follow as they grow.

Perform Regular Maintenance

Almost everything you rely on, from your car to your body to your computer, requires regular maintenance by a professional. Its recommended that you visit the doctor annually for a checkup, where they monitor your vital signs and other measures of your overall health. This will help you catch any threats to your overall health before they can grow into larger problems. Your children can help you incorporate any recommended lifestyle changes, like daily exercise, cooking healthy meals, and tracking your progress over time. It’s equally important to perform these regular maintenance checks on your car, HVAC unit, smoke detector, and fire extinguisher.

Set Up Regular Chores and Patterns

A recent survey showed that the average person spends around 2 to 4 hours weekly on house cleaning between regular tasks like doing laundry, cleaning mirrors, sweeping and mopping floors, and doing dishes. Incorporating your children by giving them age-appropriate tasks to complete helps them understand that they are also responsible for the space they live in and have to help the rest of the family maintain the home. Even small children can understand how to pick up their toys and put them away, or put their clothes away in drawers after the laundry is done. Teens can help with meal preparation, do lawn work, and run small errands in the local community for you.

Follow Through With Discipline

An important part of teaching children how to care for things is enforcing consequences for bad behavior and using positive reinforcement to encourage them to do right. Small children can be given a warning for pushing the limits, then an appropriate consequence for their age, like taking away a favorite toy for a limited time or putting them in time out. Following through is an important part of making sure they understand how discipline works. If you do not enforce consequences for bad behavior, the child might not take things seriously and continue to act in ways that are not appropriate.

Tidy Away Anything Unsightly

Unsightly clutter in your home brings down the overall tone and makes it more likely for mess to accumulate in the future. It’s hard to take pride in your interiors if you have cables everywhere, books cluttering up every shelf, or exercise materials littering your rooms. 
To correct this, you need to be innovative. If you have a home office or a music room with loose wires all over the place, explore cable management ideas. These can keep cables out of sight, helping to make your rooms appear more seamless. Likewise, if you have a lot of books, consider putting some of them into storage, either in your garage or with a storage company. As for gym equipment, keep it in a separate room or simply get a membership at a local gym and outsource the problem.

With the right example set for them and reasonable expectations for how much they can do, kids can be taught to take care of their things and make them last a long time. These habits, once ingrained, will stay with your children for a long time and serve them well in adulthood.