IMITATION

Imitation or copying one’s behavior is the way that over 90% of behavior learning exists.  Offspring start by imitating their parents, but soon also start imitating their brothers, sisters, friends and rolemodels.  Offspring need good rolemodels to imitate, and in the absence of good rolemodels, offspring will struggle to become good citizens in society.

Motivating your offspring to copy your good behaviors and the good behaviors of others is one of the most important jobs that you have as a parent.  But since every parent is less than perfect, the odds are very great that another human(s) can do what the parent should do, only much better.   If an offspring is to grow up to be better than the parents, it is an important responsibility for a parent to find the good human(s) and identify it for the offspring,  a human(s) who possesses better behaviors and useful new or better skills.

The following expressions urge your children to copy yourself and others.

“Do it because I do it!”

“Copy me.”

“I’ll show you how.”

“Try to be an adult like me.”

“Maybe you can do it like me.”

“I will teach you as much as I can if you just do what I do.”

“Let me show you how to do it.”

“If I can do it better than you then try to copy it.”

“Imitate the leader.”

“You will be closer to being a big boy by doing it.  You will be doing it just like dad!”

“My but you are starting to behave like a big girl.   You do it just like mom!”

“Focus on me so that you will probably do it next time by yourself.”

“Practice it with me and soon you will be as good as me.”

“If you copy you will learn all the necessary behaviors quickly.”

“Copy your brother and/or sister and/or uncle and/or aunt and/or grandfather and/or grandmother and/or friend and/or teacher and/or coach and/or rolemodel.”

If you liked this evergreen truth blog then read more of them and one or more of my evergreen truth books, especially MODERN PARENTING.

To read a list and access any of my approximately 400 evergreen truth blogs follow me at twitter.com/uldissprogis and I am sure that you will find more than a handful of evergreen truth blogs which will interest you.

Enjoy!!!!!!