Children cannot fully appreciate the weight of a parent's words and guidance without understanding the parent's history, struggles, and the emotional cost of their presence and investment. Just as learning history helps us appreciate sacrifices made by others, sharing our personal journey helps our children understand why our guidance matters.
Sitting with your children, no matter their ages, and helping to understand your history, your sacrifices, your mistakes, your fears, your joys, your strengths, your weakesses can all help them to see your position as attainable. It can help to "humanize" you. It's important for our children to have knowledge about our basis of understanding, our "rulebook", and the principles that we stand upon.
If you don't know what those things are, then how can you guide your children and help them figure out their path to walk.
Many parents want their words to hold meaning, but we (as parents) don't take out the time to let our children know who we are, so our words will not hold as much meaning to those that are transparent with our children. Maybe, as parents, we need to be more transparent.