Children are like sponge, they soak whatever (age appropriate or not) is around them. We need to be extremely careful as to how we behave or talk in front of them.
Sitting and enjoying a cup of coffee on the swing of my balcony I was surprised hearing my nephews make conversation with each other. The younger one had touched my mobile and the older one was trying to stop him saying, “Don’t touch Bua’s phone”. I was impressed by his responsible behavior and got a sense of pride that I had done well teaching him about not touching others things until I heard him complete his sentence by adding in an assertive tone, “don’t touch it, you understand… you better understand”.
My sense of pride evaporated completely as reality hit me real hard that he was actually imitating my exact dialog. That is when I realized the importance of speaking the proper words in front of kids.
The words, the tone and actions we use in front of them are their learning aids. Hence, it’s extremely important to use the age appropriate vocabulary in front of them. Children learn a great deal by imitation and it’s extremely difficult to make them unlearn something that they have learnt imitating their loved ones.
Children constantly learn and increase their vocabulary from people around them, things they hear on television or any other audio medium. It’s very important that kids watch television or use tabs (that is, if it is extremely important to watch the idiot box) only and only under parent supervision.
We forget and fight in front of our kids. We tend to ignore or at times even find it very cute when our children imitate some of our dialogues. At times we even take pride and ask our little ones to repeat these dialogues in front of people without realizing that we are confusing a blooming brain. I was only surprised the other day when my friend asked her two and a half daughter, “tell Aunty how Mummy scolds Daddy.” To my horror the girl gave a verbatim of the whole husband bashing episode. I was further petrified when everyone applauded at her performance.
After a couple of years this same cute behavior turns to our so called ill-mannered behavior. The same performance which we applauded to becomes humiliating when the four-year-old does this in a party without being asked to.
Who is to blame here? A question that we need to seriously think about.
So let’s be very very careful and make a conscious effort in using proper vocabulary with them. We need to behave in the way we way want them to behave with all.
Parenting hence is a full-time job where we are unfortunately or fortunately constantly reviewed by our child’s behavior in public.
-Divya Joshi
