A living example of what?

It's said that children don't come with a manual. They don't come with a "point away from face" warning either, and they need one that first year. After being a parent for 7 and a half years I have observed the 4 major sources of parenting knowledge:

1. What you learned being a kid (aka parenting the way your parents did).
2. Books
3. Friends with kids
4. Your butt

I'm not joking about the fourth item. Sometimes my wife or I will do something so odd as a parenting strategy I hope it is because we're trying to confound the children into obedience and not the early onset of a visit to the fun factory.

We know we grow up to be our parents. I can now mimic my mother's non verbal, facial "shouts", to the degree that if my kids can see my face they will stop and behave. Unfortunately all other children in the vicinity start crying and calling me "scary man" from then on. It's embarrassing at the mall when teenagers do that.

Books are evidence of our cognitive dissonance. How much did you learn in school from books that you recall regularly in real life? Compare that to how much you learned from messing up just like the examples you had just read. As nice as books are, if we don't use it, it was no help. Reading != life change, which is why you don't change religions and political parties 3 times while in traffic.

Friends are good tools to learn from. The good parents show you how to effectively discipline, reward, and encourage your children in a modern cultural setting. The bad parents show you that no matter how nice people are, they can still screw their kids up requiring a schoolyard of bullies to beat the weirdness out of them again.

We had friends over for coffee last night and it was nice. They are expecting their first child, and they got to see our parenting first hand.

The kids nagged the husband to sword fighting (foam pool noodles with a pvc core). They then proceeded to lay a beating on him that would make most L.A. police staff proud. I was actually worried for his health. Then they tried to goad him into fighting me.

They also decided that since these nice people were neighbors, the usual fear induced behavior wasn't required. They presumed that they could flaunt their independence, and caused me to have to show off how a totalitarian regime must look in a microcosm.

So here is this nice couple, knowing that in a year they will have a little wonder of joy in their arms. They got to see me leap from my chair to run to the stairs and utter phrases like "No, you WILL obey me. Get back here and stop crying. No you can't have Mommy, she decided she doesn't like kids who leak from their faces."

They suggested the next time we meet it be at their house, and we can get a sitter.