Living by example

Yesterday I went on a rampage about television. Specifically, I discussed (or rather disgust) reality shows. One of the formats I forgot to mention was the "Springer" and "Montell" type of show. In case you were born on a cultured planet and haven't seen them, they are trash TV at its worst.
"We'll now bring on a couple of people who hate each other to curse and throw punches!"
As a general rule, people go on those shows as "guests" and describe how the way they were raised has caused all of their problems. It never fails that these flawed personalities find someone else to blame. It couldn't possibly be that they made bad choices in how to behave! If it isn't the parents, it's the schools or government. In extreme cases, blame falls on the devil or alien abduction. The excuses just crack me up.
Just once I'd like to see a person who just got out of jail for beating his wife go on the air and say, "My parents were great, I'm just a jerk."
Never gonna happen.
All of that being said, a lot of our behaviour does have to do with the way we were raised. Good parenting makes good kids, and vice verse. Having well behaved kids reminds us how we should be acting ourselves as adults.
By way of example, the other day, I was out to Tim Horton's with my wife. Being a little distracted at the time, the cashier accidentally gave me too much change, an extra ten dollars. I noticed this immediately and returned the ten. The girl was almost surprised with this display of honesty. This isn't the first time that this has happened to me.
I was raised in a family that had little in the way of money or possessions. What my parents did have and gave to us kids in abundance was integrity. This was done by way of example. When we children were with them, they always tried to behave as they would have us behave. My mother was even careful to watch her language around us. That was precipitated by my first words, "Aw, shit!"
Watch what you say folks, your children are listening.
Of course, these days, parents don't have as much influence on their kids as they might like. It seems like the media has much more to do with what our children think is normal and proper. The music that they listen to and the shows they watch (note how it neatly comes back to television) shapes the morals of the next generation. Don't bother to argue that the parents control what the child watches. The economic reality of today means that we can't always have a parent directly supervising his/her child.
Friends play an important role in the raising of kids today. What the child's peers are doing is invariably what that child is going to emulate. You can try to pick your kids friends, but the minute you try to prevent them from seeing someone you don't approve of, the faster they will gravitate towards him/her. My best friend is having this problem with his son at this point.
As time has gone on, it seems that teens are influencing adults more than anything else. More adults spend their free time playing video games, spending hundreds on game consoles. Speaking in slang and curses is not considered abnormal. If you've spent any time in a factory setting, you know this first hand. Many adults are forgetting how to speak as proper adults.
I guess my point is that there seems to be a downward spiral in the way we are behaving as a society. The implications rather trouble me.
All I know is that I was raised to behave in a certain way. It's the way I would hope that my nieces would behave. All I can do is provide the best example that I can, just as my parents did for me.