Children learn to imitate at a very young age. It’s how they learn to behave, care for themselves, develop new skills, and communicate with others.
From their earliest moments, they watch you closely and pattern their own behaviors and beliefs after yours.
Your examples become permanent images that will shape their attitudes and actions for the rest of their lives.
Children are sponges and they are going to soak up so much of what you do around them.
So make the way you behave count.
Examples of Imitation Behaviors and Learning
While children will learn whatever behaviors they experience, here are some examples of specific instances where imitation will lead to learned behavior:
Responsible and Consistent Relationships
It is important to be responsible, consistent, and loving with your child.
This also holds true for the relationships you have with your partner, parents, family members, and friends. If you show your child that you are willing to accept negativity in a relationship, they will also tolerate it in their relationships as they grow.
Think about the relationship between your parents as you grew up. It’s likely what you experienced shaped what an ideal or acceptable relationship is to you.
The limit to which you accept treatment in any relationship will shape how your child will treat others and how they will allow themselves to be treated by others.
Openness and Honesty
When you enter a parent-child dynamic, it seems unnatural and out of place to apologize to your child.
First, it’s an admission to your offspring that you have made an error and, second, it seems to undermine your authority as a parent.
However, owning up to your mistakes with your child paves the way to teaching them how to be open and honest.
The same goes for being truthful to your child. A simple white lie such as the existence of Santa Clause or the good old, “Hey, we need to go because the playground is closing,” is not as harmful as outright lying about important truths.
That being said, truth should be delivered in an age-appropriate way.
Having open and honest communication with your child is going to teach them to do the same. You want your child to feel they can talk to you about their issues as they grow and you want them to be able to build trustworthy relationships with others.
Self Care
It is crucial as a mother that you take good care of yourself.
You cannot pour from an empty cup.
Taking care of yourself helps you to take care of them.
Doing so also demonstrates to your child the concept of self-love. When you show your child that you care about your own needs and well-being, they will develop the skills to do the same.
This also builds a sense of empathy as they begin to understand why you taking care of yourself is as important as them taking care of themselves.
When they go out into the world, they are more sensitive to their own needs as well as the needs of others. Practicing self-care creates caring children.
Individuality
It is also important to show your child that you have a life apart from them and that you are your own person with individual needs and interests.
This models to your child a strong self of sense and demonstrates how to be independent.
While we may encourage our children to tie their own shoes or make their own meals, we also need to model that behavior ourselves. We need to show them that it’s okay to do things apart from each other and that your interests may differ from theirs.
Apart from helping to teach them independence, this will teach them diversity as well.
Positive and Healthy Communication
Positive and healthy communication involves being open, honest, and respectful. While you want to teach your children openness and honesty by being open and honest with them, it is also important to demonstrate positive communication with other people.
This means arguing in healthy ways with your partner or dealing with conflict in a civilized manner.
Showing your child how to communicate in positive and healthy ways will build a foundation on which your child can interact with the outside world in constructive and non-aggressive ways.
How to Ensure Positive Learning Through Imitation
The entire basis of raising a well-adjusted child is to model healthy behaviors. Honestly, just don’t be a garbage human.
However, there are some ways in which you can control your child’s learning and that is by taking some control of your child’s environment and giving them the tools they need to deal with negative situations.
Consider Your Child’s Surroundings
You can’t confine your child to a bubble but you can make the choice to actively surround your child with situations and environments that exhibit positive behaviors.
For example, you can enroll your child in extra-curricular activities such as Girl Guides or Scouts that focus on reinforcing ideas of respect and community.
While you can’t control every situation your child ends up in, you can certainly balance any potential negative environments by providing and facilitating positive ones.
Limit Exposure to Negative Influences
Again, you can’t bubble your kid, but you do have a certain amount of control over what they are exposed to.
In your household, you can limit their experience with violent, aggressive, or inappropriate shows, moves, video games, and online videos.
Kids will imitate what they see on television, so make sure what they watch is conducive to developing positive behaviors and expectations.
Talk It Out
Children will find themselves involved in unavoidable negative situations and will witness negative behavior.
This is your opportunity to have a discussion with your little one about appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.
We can’t control other people’s children but we can shape how our children view certain situations.
You may get a “But that kid gets to do it!” but eventually your child will understand that sometimes they need to play by a different, and more appropriate, set of rules.
Do As You Say
The most important thing about modeling positive behaviors to your children is not to be a hypocrite. Children often don’t understand why you get to do something but they are not allowed to.
We, as adults, are privvy to engaging in behaviors that our children are not. However, it’s important to differentiate between things you are allowed to do because you are an adult and things that you just shouldn’t do period.
Being a grown-up does not give you the right to display negative behaviors. For example, throwing a plate across the floor and then chastising your child for doing the same isn’t fair.
Children Do As They See
Even if your little one is still a wee babe, you will soon see them patterning many of their behaviors after your own.
What begins as a simple imitation of a smile or expression will soon become larger behaviors that will affect interpersonal relationships.
Being mindful of what you say and do around your child will help them build a strong sense of security and self-esteem.
