Train up a child in the way he should go.

Proverbs 22:6: 'Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.'

Training is more than teaching. It's modeling, repeating, correcting, over years.

'The way he should go' can mean the right path generally, or the way bent to that child's specific design.

This is a proverb — a general principle, not a guarantee. Kids have free will.

But what you plant deep usually comes back. The seeds you sow in childhood often bear fruit decades later.