Here is where we go wrong with our children.

First of all, what was done to us as children we do to our own children. In my case it started with me as soon as I could speak, or more correctly hear, what was being said around me. In particular, what triggered my BS radar at an early, impressionable age was what I heard versus what I saw, or what I heard when I was not supposed to hear.

I caught on pretty quickly, at least by age 8, that my parents and other adults were pulling the old "do as I say, not as I do" double standard on me. As I grew older, more sophisticated, and a great deal more cynical I might even have said I was outright lied to by the adults in my life. Take smoking or drinking as examples. These products were supposed to be bad for me, and yet mysteriously good for them.

My parents were not saints. Few parents are. I don't criticize mine for their overindulgence in alcohol, for example, but I never forgave them their hypocrisy where the subject was concerned. Drugs would be another example. For some reason they were able to justify pharmaceutical drugs issued on the flimsiest of excuses but pot was considered a serious offense.

Our children aren't stupid. If anything they are far smarter than we were at their age. Their BS detectors are far more sophisticated than ours ever were. They just have a different kind of smarts.

When we try to fool our kids we are only kidding ourselves.