Do as I say; not as I do

Growing up, this was a popular statement used by many parents; as a matter of fact, I still hear it used today: parents would often tell their their children to “do as I say; not as I do.” But if you know anything about children, you will know that children do what you do and say what you say: this is called modeling according to popular Psychologist Albert Bandura. When children do as you do, it is based on the actions they observed; hence Bandura also refers to this as observational learning.

My son is a great example. When I pray, I sometimes apply olive oil to my head as a reminder of the anointing of the Lord upon me and my son sees that. One morning as I was doing it, he stretched out his little hands to me as a non verbal cue for me to put some oil in his hand. Thankfully, I was aware of the meaning of that, so I poured a little in his hand. Would you guess what he did? He touched my head and rubbed the oil from his hand unto my hair. 

This is not the only thing my son has done as a sign of modeling what we do as parents. So, I am often reminded to be extremely mindful of what I say and do around him because I do not want him to model the wrong things.

Lesson

You may currently be a parent or plan to be, practise the right things for your children’s sake. If you usually speak negatively, you cannot wonder why your child also may speak negatively. In case you don’t understand what I mean by negatively, let me give you an example:

Making statements like “I am broke”, “my brain cannot think like the intelligent people”, I will never accomplish my dreams”, life is too hard”, “people just hate me” and I can go on and on, but you should get the concept.

Practicing unhealthy and wrongful acts such as smoking, drinking alcohol, using illicit drugs, watching violent movies and listening to videos, audios or music with profane (bad) language. 

Please, I implore you to model the right things for your children and I know everyone’s ‘right’ may be different at times, but let’s not fool ourselves: many of the things you do, you know they are wrong or that you can do better.

Ofcourse, there are some things for adults and some things for children but I am speaking of those things which will help to mold your children as they grow.

So now you should be able to say “ Do as I say and Do.”

Yours for motivation

Jennel.