They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In that case, parents should feel flattered daily when they do family home activities, especially when their children are small.
It seems every time I turn around, I see myself recreated in the young people around me. Even so, as my daughter plays games for preschoolers, her stern commands for her dolls to "clean up this mess" somehow flatter me less than they might.
I especially like it, though, when her activities for preschoolers attempt to imitate new academic skills -- skills she has watched her parents and older siblings employ.
Like the day a few years ago when she decided to try her hand at cursive writing. Having recently mastered the process of printing the alphabet and putting a few letters together to make words, she decided she was up to the challenge of "writing" in the beautiful flowing script of her elders. (Well, it looked beautiful to her anyway.)
We sat together at a table, I writing letters and she filling her lined tablet with lovely looping characters, all carefully slanted to the right. She would alternately watch me and then reproduce what she observed.
The Importance of Modeling
Experts say this kind of modeling is essential for kids to develop healthy academic skills. If you want your child to become a reader, let her see you reading often at home. If you want her to develop good study skills, model hard work and perseverance in all sorts of tasks. If you want her to value education, you'd better continue to ask questions and learn new skills yourself.
Although we were sending letters that day, we could also have rewritten a television commercial, created a journal of her daily activities or fashioned a new ending to a favorite story. The idea was to show her by example that writing has a purpose, it's a positive activity and it can be fun.
Along the way, she was learning that ideas are expressed through words and words combine to form stories and she discovered there were things inside that she could communicate in writing, as well.
At least, that's what I thought she was learning. As often happens when you actually sit down and work with your children, I learned a little about her, as well. I discovered a few gaps in her understanding about the meaning of all those carefully crafted characters.
Lessons Learned
After diligently filling a dozen or so lines with jagged, undecipherable text -- complete with ascenders and descenders -- she handed me her page.
"There, Mom," she crowed. "Now, read what it says."
I paused, buying time and a strategy that would meet her expectations without ruining the story she thought she had written. With a flash of creativity, I reverted to an old preschool-teaching tactic of asking leading questions about unrecognizable works of art.
"Tell me a little about the story first," I suggested.
Her flashing eyes caught mine and she answered with just a hint of gentle reproach.
"Mom, you know I can't read cursive."
Linda Wacyk is a former EduGuide editor from Grand Ledge, Michigan.