Mother’s On Display: Unintentional Modeling
A list of ways your children are learning from your behavior that you may not have noticed.
Whether you are a 6-foot-tall bombshell or not, girl, you’re modeling.
Those kids are watching and learning from everything you’re doing, regardless of your intention. And you may not even notice the things your little guys are picking up from you.
It’s quite a responsibility; your kids watch how you listen to other adults.
Children pick up the nuanced details of human interaction by watching and listening to your conversations. They are also affected by how you listen to them, both in times of need (like after a skinned knee) and in the times they just want to show you that they can jump over a curb.
Every once in a while, your kids witness how you deal with conflict.
How you respond to disagreements with family members; or stress about having to cancel holiday plans due to a fight with your aunt, they see it all and they are making little plans for how they will deal with conflict as adults.
They’re watching when we eat, drink, and move our bodies, they see how we take care of ourselves.
Every time I work out it seems my kids are annoyed that I’m hogging the TV. Winded from jumping jacks, I tell them I’m making sure my heart is healthy enough to take them hiking when I’m an old lady. They don’t understand now, but give it a few years and they’ll see that self-care is something that I really tried to model on purpose.
Kids are aware of how we solve problems and they pick things up from our behaviors.
Imagine getting back from a Home Depot trip only to find that you snagged the wrong size tube lightbulb. Some parents would become irate, angry even. Some would put on their coats to run back into town immediately. Others may put it off, waiting until a different day to replace the lightbulb. All of the above were absorbed by the hypothetical 8-year-old they have with them.
This is in the same vein as kids viewing how their grown-ups handle mistakes.
Same idea as above, any emotional outbursts or calm collected challenge accepting goes noticed by your kids. In the long run, they may find themselves self-frustrated adults if you were angry with yourself for making mistakes in front of them. Be as kind and forgiving for yourself as you would others.
How we care for what’s around us, including our own things is (figuratively) picked up by our kids.
In my house, I’ve had to have a conversation with my Youtube viewing preschoolers about our toys not being disposable. I like the idea of taking care of my things and I think the kids should not be intentionally rough and demand more toys if they’re broken– it gets difficult with three sons. These kids see so much consumerism that I’ve been navigating through teaching them appropriate play and not replacing things that are destroyed on purpose. An unfortunate side effect of Youtube time has been dopamine-drip-toy-opening videos which my husband and I hate (and have blocked!) My modeling may not be able to keep up against pop-culture here.
Kids are picking up details from everything we do in life, not just the life lessons we share with them intentionally!
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-LaChelle
