I heard that 'personality' (whatever that means) is kinda set in stone by age three or four. Not 'set in stone' but it becomes much harder to change beyond tha

I heard that 'personality' (whatever that means) is kinda set in stone by age three or four. Not 'set in stone' but it becomes much harder to change beyond that point. So we made sure that, right from scratch, our kids were disciplined as consistently as possible, so that their 'personality' boundaries at age three / four were pretty close to where we'd like them to be (this is all very vague, but, fundamentally, we'd done what we could to have them 'set in stone' from a good base). This may just coincide with the age bracket at which kids make friends and start spending increasing amounts of time with other people and therefore having 'outside' influence. The lesson being: set them up to know good / bad / appropriate / inappropriate by this time. Allowing some time to involve yourself in their interests (which equates to their friends' interests), rather than forcing them to conform with your own interests, should keep you somewhat more relevant in their eyes. This is much easier said than done - I've struggled with this the whole time, but Minecraft was a great phase :) Learn to laugh at what they find funny, just to connect. Look at it through their naive eyes rather than your own broken-by-the-world cynical life experience.