Parenting & Family Quote by Lee Haney

Haney’s line lands because it treats parenting like training: you don’t build strength by talking about reps, you build it by doing them. Coming from a champion bodybuilder, “lead by example” isn’t a soft slogan; it’s a philosophy of habit. The jab at “do as I say, not as I do” works as cultural shorthand for adult hypocrisy, but Haney tightens the screw by calling it a cliche, as if to say we’ve normalized a double standard so thoroughly that it barely registers as wrong.

The intent is practical and corrective: stop outsourcing character to lectures. The subtext is even sharper: kids are not persuaded by parental authority so much as they’re trained by parental patterns. If a household runs on stress-eating, screen addiction, casual dishonesty, or conflict avoidance, no amount of “be disciplined” will compete with the daily curriculum of what’s actually rewarded and repeated.

There’s also a quiet assertion of responsibility that cuts against a popular modern instinct to blame schools, peers, or “the culture.” Haney pulls the locus of control back home: parents are the first influencers, before algorithms, coaches, or friends. That framing matters in an era when “role model” is usually a celebrity job description. He’s reminding us it’s a proximity job.

What makes the quote effective is its refusal to romanticize: modeling isn’t inspiration, it’s exposure. Children learn what adulthood looks like by watching it up close, unedited, every day.