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When he walks through the door you scream at him and say, among other things, that how can he expect to do well in school and be successful in life if he goes to sleep so late.
Your son, without missing a beat, yells back,"You are one big hypocrite! You yell at me to go to sleep early when you're still up!"You become silent and your kid goes to his room and chalks up another victory.
Don't fall for it! I know that we regard hypocrisy as one of the gravest sins (although I don't know of anyone dying or even been physically hurt at the hands of it)but this man is not a hypocrite!The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition defines hyporicy as "The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; falseness.
" Therefore, in the above example, since the father REALLY believes that partying and stayingup late is not good for his CHILD no matter what HE, the father, does he is not a hypocrite.
Who, then, is a hypocrite? A hypocrite is someone who advocates that going to sleep on time is of paramount importanceand that it is easy for anyone to do, but he himself goes to sleep late.
However even if he really believes that going to sleep late (smoking cigarettes, cursing, etc.
) is horrible but he cannot control himself and keep up to his standard he is not a hypocrite.
He is, just a pitiful and unfortunate soul.
This a very important point to keep in mind.
We loath and despise hypocrisyto such degree that often times we don't fulfill our obligation for fear of being a hypocrite.
However a smoker who suffers from emphysema and doesn't try to stophis son from smokingis not keeping his responsibility of keeping his child healthy .
A person who flunked out of high school and, because of this, struggles to support his family anddoesn't encourage his child to get a college education is hurting him.
Therefore, for the good of your children, it is important to realize that even when we fail to live up to our standards we must still try to educate our children to be successful and hopefully they will be better and have a better life than we have.
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