Parenthood: Week 448 – Monkey See

I heard the insert in the potty shake in the corner of our living room as I was looking down and writing an email on my laptop.

“Ethan, good job, buddy,” I affirmed, and then I looked over and saw Lucas sitting on the potty. Lucas is turning two in December and is very early to start potty training, but he has seen Ethan use that potty and wanted to do just like Ethan even though he didn’t understand what Ethan was doing.

So much of what young children do is based on imitation. While Ollie did imitate Diana and me, after observing my two younger sons, it’s clear that children learn from imitating each other differently than they imitate their parents.

To a child, so much of what adults do are impossibilities, physically and mentally. To Lucas, Ethan is doing things at this level, and it makes sense that he sees what Ethan, as doing as more accessible.  Lucas is sitting on Ethan’s potty instead of trying to sit on the toilet as I do.

It’s not uncommon to see Ethan and Ollie on the couch watching television lying on the couch in the same way. Ollie does this thing where he tries to stand on his head against the wall which Ethan learned from him. When Ollie and Ethan are running around the backyard, Lucas often is trailing after them, not fully understanding what they are doing in their pretend play, but he knows that they are doing fun, so he copies them.

There is another side to this. Ethan sometimes growls when he says goodbye during FaceTime calls, and guess what? Now, Lucas does the same thing.  If Ollie decides to be energetic around bedtime, Ethan will copy him, and we have two children we are trying to calm down. In this way, Ollie and Ethan have a lot of power over what their younger siblings do, and it’s something they are beginning to understand.

Every child is a teacher, and it’s fascinating to see how my children have continued to teach each other different things. Most of the teaching is not deliberate but through actions. Yes, Ollie will read to his brothers, but they have learned more from watching him read, which I see every day as Lucas looks through piles of books on the floor every day.

Watching my children learn from each is an important reminder of how much they learn from me when I’m not actively teaching them.  Children see more than we realize and are learning all of the time. 

As I see them learn things from each other, I wonder what they are learning from me.