What Our Children Are Watching

There is a question I cannot shake lately. Not about policy, not about politics, but about example.

What are our children learning as they watch us?

I am the daughter of educators. My parents were both professors of mathematics. My grandmother taught biology. My grandfather taught mathematics. I grew up in a home where truth was not optional, where precision mattered, where intellectual honesty was a form of respect, for knowledge and for other people.

But I also grew up somewhere else. I grew up in Romania, under a communist dictatorship, where those in power often said one thing and did another. Where truth bent under pressure. Where accountability was selective. Where the rules were not the rules, unless they needed to be, for you.

And children notice these things. Even when we think they do not, especially when we hope they do not.

I remember being asked, as a student, to write an essay praising our dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu. I knew what was expected. I knew what would earn the good grade. I also knew it would not be true. So, I chose something else. With my mother’s quiet approval, I said I had forgotten my homework at home. I took the bad grade. It was easier to be seen as careless than to become someone who would repeat a lie on command.

We were also made to recite slogans, words meant to bind loyalty through repetition: “Stima noastră și mândria, Ceaușescu-România!” (Our esteem and pride, Ceausescu-Romania). I moved my lips, so it looked like I was speaking. But I did not say the words.

And some of my teachers knew. You could see it in their eyes. They chose not to call it out, because they, too, knew the truth. Even in a system built on control, small acts of integrity survived. That is what I carry with me.

Because what I learned then has never left me: when leaders abandon honesty and accountability, the damage is not abstract. It seeps into daily life. It teaches people to doubt, to whisper instead of speaking, to look away instead of standing up. Over time, it reshapes what feels normal. It shapes children most of all.

What I experienced as a child is not just memory, it is a pattern we now understand. When young people grow up in environments where dishonesty and lack of accountability are visible, they do not simply reject it, they adapt to it. They begin to see it as normal, necessary, even expected.

They learn the rules we do not say out loud. And when the gap between what is said and what is done grows wide enough, something dangerous happens:

They stop believing the system is fair at all. When that belief is lost, something even more troubling can take its place, the idea that honesty is optional, and integrity is a disadvantage.

Children are always learning what kind of world they are inheriting. And what kind of adults they are expected to become.

Here in our own community, recent events involving a member of our school board have brought questions of integrity, accountability, and leadership into sharp focus. The official findings and processes will follow their course.

But there is another layer to consider, one that does not wait. What are our children seeing?

They are watching how adults respond when serious concerns arise. They are watching whether we take responsibility or deflect it. They are watching whether standards apply evenly, or only when convenient.

They are watching whether we mean what we say. And they are learning. Not from our mission statements, not from our slogans, but from our behavior. So, when fundamental questions of integrity arise in the very institutions meant to guide our children, we cannot pretend this is abstract.

It is not abstract to them. It is instructional.

We often say that children are our future. But if we take that seriously, we must accept the harder truth: we are their present. We are the model.

And modeling integrity is not always easy. It asks for humility. It asks for courage. It asks us to hold ourselves to the same standards we expect of others, even when it is uncomfortable, even when it costs something.

I know what it looks like when those standards are abandoned. I have lived in a system where truth was negotiable and accountability was uneven. It did not create strength. It created fear, mistrust, and quiet erosion of institutions, of relationships, of hope.

We should not accept even a shadow of that here. Not in our schools, not in our leadership, not in the example we set for the next generation. Because children do not learn integrity from what we preach. They learn it from what we tolerate.

This is not about perfection. It is about principle. It is about whether we are willing, as adults, to act like adults, fully, honestly, and responsibly, especially when it matters most. Because it always matters to someone who is watching. And that someone is often a child.

If we expect our children to tell the truth, to take responsibility, to act with integrity, then we must expect it from those who lead them.

Because the lesson they carry forward will not be what we said, it will be what we were willing to stand for.