Kids don’t learn from what you say is okay. They learn from what you let slide.

Standards get set at the point of enforcement, not announcement. A younger sibling hears the rule once, then watches what actually happens the twentieth time somebody breaks it, and the second one is the lesson that sticks. Silence reads as permission, especially coming from somebody they look up to. Your real position is whatever you have been tolerating without comment.

Find one thing you have been letting slide around somebody younger: the joke at a kid’s expense, the lie that ends an argument, the promise nobody bothers keeping. Say something small the next time it happens. It does not have to be a speech.