Our parents didn't just “talk the talk”, they “walked the walk”.

In other words, they practiced what they preached.
“I don't get it when I hear mothers telling their kids 'Don't tell lies' and then in the next breath smoothly tell phone callers, 'Oh, he's not home right now' when the husband is sitting right there in front of them,” says a medical school resident who is spending time learning Hanafi fiqh as well.  “Or how about when parents teach their kids 'It's wrong to backbite' and then complain about the in-laws to anyone who will listen?  It's just beyond me!”
When pressed for examples of not succumbing to hypocrisy in his own family life, he says that his parents taught him and his siblings the importance of prayer and then never allowed them to miss any, even if it meant praying in the middle of Disneyland.  “Our dad taught us that while there might be a time for fun and play, it never comes at the expense of giving up our duties to Allah.  And since he was always the first to stand up for prayer, we just naturally followed.”
Another experienced mother gave me this age-old advice, “You can teach your kids the rules of prayer all you want, but if you're not going to pray, they're not going to pray.  Children learn from what their parents do, not just what they say.”
“But it's not enough to just teach your children to pray,” interjects another mother who was raised a secular Jew but is now Muslim.  “What about how you pray?  Do you have presence in your prayer?  Are you sad if you ever miss a prayer?  Those lessons are all just as important as learning to pray.”
I was once working with an African-American convert friend when the time for Maghrib prayer came in. I had been busy taking care of some tasks, but I stopped and said, “Well, I guess I better go get my prayer out of the way.”
Startled, she looked up and then chuckled.  “In our house, we say we're going to get prayer 'in the way'.”
SubhanAllah, what a difference one word makes!  What a difference in attitude!
“I was sitting in my room reciting my morning dhikr while the kids were completing an art project in the family room,” an Egyptian friend shared with me the other day.  “It suddenly struck me that I always recite my litanies in private, so I got up and joined them in their area of the house.  They continued to paint while I continued with my prayers.  They need to see me doing this…and they need to see me doing this happily.”
The other day one of my sons became frustrated while searching for an elusive pencil in the writing desk.  He shoved papers aside and slammed the drawer shut when no pencil materialized, grumbling the entire time.  I began to lecture him about the merits of patience when I realized that I had behaved in the exact same manner while looking for my keys a few days earlier.  Children really are like sponges; they soak in everything around them.  “Garbage in, garbage out,” cautions one teacher.
“Children need to see that Islam 'worked' in our home,” says another scholar.  “Islam isn't just about praying and fasting and charity.  Islam is an attitude that must be infused in the mundane day-to-day dealings with life.  Do parents treat each other with respect?  How do they react to the ups and downs o