I’m working on a column right now about how our kids learn.

I think parents need to work hard and capitalize on every teachable moment. Your kids are learning. You might as well be doing the teaching.

A few weeks ago in church, my son started was enjoying a song during the worship service and began doing a dance called The Sprinkler. I promise he didn’t learn that at home. My wife and I are Baptists, we have never “sprinkled.”

When I asked my son which one of his television shows he learned that dance from he told me it wasn’t television at all. He said he had learned it from our preacher’s wife during Children’s Church one week.

I was glad to be off the hook on that one. But last week I found out that he was learning in a lot of different places. He called up a Nickelodeon show on OnDemand called Nick News. The woman on the news was explaining to children about all of the different religions in the world and how children should be tolerant of all of them etc. etc.

Trust me when I tell you that my child won’t learn spiritual truths from Nick News, Spongebob Squarepants, or Scooby Doo. We turned that program off, had a little talk and headed off to church.

I won’t always be in the room when something like that comes up. He needs to be secure in what he believes before those moments come his way. I don’t want him to know what I believe. I want him to develop his own beliefs so he can withstand pressure to conform to someone else’s views.

We owe it to our kids to be the ones who provide their life lessons. Don’t abdicate your duties.