If you grew up in family with no money, like I did, you vividly recall when one of your parents let you stuff packages of Twizzlers in your pants or jacket before a trip to the movies.
It was much easier to pull off in the winter months, when you could shove twice as many goodies into your large winter coat that Mom had bought at Burlington Coat Factory on layaway.
The reason we did this?
The movies charged twice the price the grocery store did, and we couldn’t afford candy or popcorn at movie theater prices.
It seems harmless enough.
But is it good parenting?
After all, sneaking something into a movie is technically taking away profits from the theaters, which survive largely from concession sales.
We as parents punish our kids when they lie. Or when they sneak around. When they break the rules. We’re constantly pounding into their heads the importance of honesty. Of ethics. Of doing the right thing.
As we should.
But then they watch us.
They see when we’re rude to the barista at the coffee shop. And it conflicts with our years of instruction to be kind.
They watch when we skip the line, conflicting with our instruction to be patient.
They hear our phone calls when we’re rude to our own parents.
I recall a visit to Toys “R” Us about a decade ago. A woman was screaming at her 5-year-old to get it together:
“If you don’t calm down, I’m leaving you at the store,” the mom shouted at her toddler as her son cried hysterically while lying on the dirty store floor.
Wonder where her son had learned the art of not calming down?
Developmental psychologists have long known that children learn by emulating adults.
According to social learning theory, most people learn by watching others.
They see how we handle stress.
They watch how we treat other people and observe how we handle our feelings.
They listen to our phone calls and hear how we talk with friends, exes, our parents, customer service people and others.
They’re like sponges for visual and audio information.
And even when we think our children aren’t paying attention, they’re still watching and listening to us.
None of us who raise kids always gets it right.
There will be times we falter. When we have a bad day.
They will see us at our worst. When we tell a fib. Or when we didn’t say something the right way.
I know I wish I could take back some slip-ups.
We ought not to beat ourselves up. We’re human.
But as a matter of course, if we conduct ourselves with the same values we want our kids to employ — values like kindness, ethics, justice, empathy and honesty — then we will raise kids who grow into ethical, kind adults.
And here’s the bonus. If we parent well, we’ll actually become better adults along the way!
Kids will emulate us whether we want them to or not. If you’re a poor model, let’s hope they can afford some good therapy as adults.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Pete Wright on Unsplash
