It has long been established that parents are a child's first teacher. However, we should not confidently extend this proposition to claim that parents are always a child's best teacher. The family education is after all multi-faceted, and a child could be positively nurtured and nourished the same degree he/she is negatively influenced or insufficiently cared.
Placed in a supportive family environment where respect, care and affectionate bond is available, a child could be more ready to learn and interact with the environment. As the most readily accessible adults, parents could exert themselves as the first role models for children. Children pick up the way of talking, learn about what is appropriate behavior and what is not, and get nurtured in their tastes and interests. So if parents could provide an environment full of positive linguistic input toward the child, it is more likely for the child to develop in verbal capacity. Besides, by giving different feedback to children’s behavior, parents show what is proper and acceptable and what is not. As for the cultivation in interest, it is not rare that a child born into a family of athletes turns out to be athlete, neither is it rare that a child raised up in a family of musicians gain more edge than his peers when dealing with music. The Straus family, namely Richard and John Strauss, best illustrates how a father musician cultivate a child excel in music.
In contrast, if a child is brought up in a family where he sees distain, violence and even hatred between parents or parents to him, the child may grow up to be self-alienated, or aggressive to others. In this case, the parents could never be good teachers, what they instill in the child's mind is not anything positive but merely the opposite. We have read too much about how the juvenile delinquent confesses that he/she was abused at home, or how his/her parents did similar things.
On some occasions, a child is brought up in a family where due attention, affection and care is deprived from the family atmosphere, he is disenfranchised from any feedback, be it positive or negative, from the two adults who are supposed to be the closest people in the world. In this case, the child is placed in an environment where stimuli for neural and emotional development is far from being enough. Scientific research has shown that mammals placed in a stimuli-deficient environment are lagged behind in neural connections than their peers in environment rich in stimuli. Thereby the child is deprived of the opportunity of learning from their parents, or the parents are not teachers, let alone best teachers to the child.
In short, it is evident that family environment provides the backdrop where a child receive osmosis in every aspect. However, given that difference in parenting style and behaviors of the parents, we should be wary of the irresponsible conclusion that parents are "best" teachers. （491）