I am a grandparent and like most of the people in this group I am aware of the mistakes I made as a parent.
 
I encouraged my son to express his feeling verbally  and now I am paying the price.
 
Recently I decided to color my hair. I went to the drug store and spent several minutes before I carefully decided on a color. The one I chose was called, “China Berry”. I thought it was bright but conservative. It looked good on the package and I thought it would take 10 years off my looks.
 
I got my equipment together, timer, extra  towels, and read the directions over twice. I was ready to be a new me.
 
I begin to get a little apprehensive while my hair was still wet. It looked too dark. As it dried I was in for a surprise. It was sort of eggplant brownish. It was the purplish part that shocked me.
 
My son came in and took one look at my hair. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey Mom?
“What Ben?” I said.
“You look like an over the hill punk rocker” He said with a sheepish grin on his face.
“Thanks, Ben”. I said and I knew he was telling the truth.
 
The next day I went back to the drug store and got some color remover. This time it came out orange and frizzy on the end. I looked like my hair was on fire.
 
Once again Ben has a comment to make.
“Hey Mom?
“What Ben?”
“You know what you look like?”
“What Ben?”
“You look like a burnt out hooker”
“Thanks Ben.”
 
The moral of this story is, be careful  what you teach your children because that is exact what you will get back. If you don’t want to hear the truth, you might encourage then to be a little less truthful.