My 8-year-old daughter injured her foot in a
head-on-collision with the pavement a few days ago. Even though the scabs have mostly healed and her
pride has since recovered, she thinks it necessary to walk with a limp, to
remind us of her unfortunate mishap. She
only does the limp when she’s bored, is in no rush to get anywhere, or when she
has a captive audience. Today was the
latter. With my mother and my best friend
in town staying with us, my daughter really played up the gimpy routine. As we all watched her shuffle down the hall
to her room, taking one regular step with her good leg and then dragging the
bad leg behind her, we were amused to see my 3-year-old daughter following her
lead and limping with the same foot. We
stifled our giggles so as not to promote it, and returned to our conversation.
A few hours later, I walked into the living room and asked
my older daughter to close her eyes in an attempt to hide the red velvet batter
for her birthday cake that I was carrying in my bowl, and open her mouth for
taste. I gave her a bite and turned to offer
my littlest girl a sample as well. I
found her sitting on the other end of the couch with her eyes closed and her
mouth wide open waiting for a bite herself.
Monkey See, Monkey Do.
The imitating and copying our kids do can be adorable, endearing
and encouraging, as it means they’re picking things up without having to be
actually taught how to do something. The
mimicking they do can also be a reality check for your own behavior. When your 5th grader drops the
F-Bomb in your presence and your kindergartener smokes an imaginary cigarette
with her imaginary tea, you realize as a parent, ‘you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to
do.’
We’re going to pass bad habits down to our kids. There’s really no way around it. I challenge you, though, to take two minutes
and think about the things you do and say to, and around, your children. Model the future by imagining how it feels to
you when your child duplicates that action, those words, or that belief on his own. Will you be proud of him? If the answer is no, get rid of it when you’re
around your kids, at the minimum.
Imagine what it would feel like to take it out of rotation
all together. Would it be the end of the
world? If you can fathom existing, maybe
even happily, without that behavior, belief, or language, just go for the gold
and drop kick it out of your life.
If you can’t envision your life without the drunk driving,
name calling, heckling, obsessive cleaning, ambulance chasing, or whatever idiosyncrasies
you own, then hold on to it; to each his own.
Just be prepared for your little monkeys to do what they see.
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