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With your children, you have an opportunity to encourage them in ways you were not. You can instill them with principles to help them excel that they won’t get in school or from their friends. Your children will absorb much more from you than you realize. The examples you set by your attitude and actions can be imprinted on them for life.

Steamboats revolutionized travel on the waterways of south Louisiana and did wonders for the economies of the places they visited. Unfortunately, one of their biggest drawbacks was that they had a marked tendency to blow up
Lloyd’s Steamboat Directory, and Disasters on the Western Waters, written in 1856, lists more than 200 steamboat disasters in the early 1800s, mostly on the Mississippi. But south Louisiana streams had their share, and 1845 seemed to be a particularly unfortunate year for Bayou Courtableau, the waterway that led to the old port of Washington.

Children are sponges for knowledge and information. They are born a virtual blank slate. They pay attention to everything you say to them. You are the purveyor of all knowledge. Children can’t distinguish between when you are serious and when you say something impulsively, without thinking. A single comment can stay with a child for the rest of his or her life. If you doubt this, I’m sure you can remember a number of statements made to you when you were younger.