How to Be Your Baby’s Top Model
Alright, I’ll admit it. Watching America’s Next Top Model the first couple seasons or so was one of my guilty pleasures. It was interesting to see what models actually had to go through as well as refreshing to hear Tyra Banks tell young women that physical beauty alone was not enough. While watching, it occurred to me that you and I might be America’s Next Top Model…at least in our children’s eyes. No, your little ones aren’t going to be snapping off digital photos of you as you strut your stuff but what they will be doing is taking mental pictures of you as you go about your daily tasks, interacting with the world around you. While you may not exactly be America’s next top model and win that multi-million dollar contract with a top agency, you are now your child’s top model and you’ve already won the contract.
Model Behavior
Modeling behavior is what we’re talking about and I know you may be thinking, “What does this have to do with baby?” Well, we all have some suspect habits that may not be so bad while our children are infants, but as your kids grow and notice things – and woaaah! How they notice- they will not hesitate to call you to the mat in their own special way. So, I thought I’d write this little reminder to myself and to whomever else may need it. The best advice you can give your children on living right is, well, just living right. This may mean different things to different people, but the idea is that no matter what values you’re attempting to instill in your little ones, they’re going to take their cues from how well you live out those values. Want your children to eat their vegetables? You eat your vegetables (if my wife is reading this, I’m sure she’s laughing quite hard right now). Don’t want to see your children smoking? Don’t smoke. Want your children to learn to be honest and up front with people? Well, I think you get the picture.
Break the Bad Habits
Back to why I’m telling you this while you’ve only got an infant on your hands right now. I’m doing so because bad habits are often hard to break. They can be relatively painless if you really make up your mind and are a very disciplined individual, but many of us aren’t. So, I thought I would bring this to your attention early on so that you’d have plenty of time to shake that three pack a day habit before your child’s in elementary (though, with an infant on the way or in the home already, you may want to consider quitting smoking now) and doing the section in class on health which will ultimately end with your little one coming home after a teacher tells them that smoking causes cancer and asking you why you still do it. Or if you’re like me and don’t care much for veggies and have to listen to your spouse tell you that it’s hard to hear you harp on the kids for not eating theirs when you don’t eat them yourself.
New Year’s Resolution
Bottom line new parent, start now! With the time of year when many will make New Year’s resolutions right around the corner, this is your opportunity to resolve to ditch those suspect behaviors and bad habits because before long you will be your child’s top model and the “do as I say, not as I do” method isn’t so effective as they get older. Take my word for it on this one.
To make things easier for your new found desire to do better and be better, I’ve included a few steps to help you get there.
- Identify what things you’re going to change but don’t do them all at once. You may consider writing them down and placing the list somewhere in plain sight.
- Once you’ve identified what you want to change, pick a couple easy changes to start and you’ll have a nice bit of momentum going into working on the tough changes. An easy change may be something like not taking off your clothes and just dropping them by the side of the bed, while the tough one may be eating healthier, exercising or not smoking.
- It takes roughly 30 days to break a habit or create a new one, so after having done steps 1 and 2, the most important thing you can do now is just commit. Tell yourself that no matter what, you are going to stay the course. I’m a huge fan of Yoda, so I’ll give you his wisdom, “Do or do not. There is no try.”
- As you travel this road, make sure to take note of which things in your life take you off course from the changes you’ve decided on. If your change is a healthier diet, you may have stresses in your life which cause you to frequently dive into the Dreyer’s and defeat the change you’re working to bring about. Deal with the distractions and disruptions and you increase your chances of success. There are whole books on this and I’d recommend Boundaries and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
- A large part of parenting is disciplining your children. To be clear I’m not talking about punishment, which is different than disciplining, or training. Look at your child as your apprentice. They are learning by watching so whatever it is you’re trying to teach, your habits and actions speak louder than your words ever will. Whether you like it or not, disciple is the root of discipline so don’t expect your disciplining to go too far if you’re not in a position to effectively disciple them.
Question
What about yourself, have you changed as a result of having children? What are you still working on changing?
Keith Wilcox says...
I’ve also noticed that the do as I say thing has started to lose a little of its effectiveness. Well, I guess it’s about time I shape up and start a little self improvement. I can only fake it for so long, right!
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
Tshaka Armstrong says...
Thanks for your honesty Keith! It’s never too late to make a change. We’re all a work in progress anyway.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0