This clip is 15 years old now, but still as powerful as when it was made:

It reminds me not just of kids copying bad behaviour, but the fact that they do indeed copy a whole lot of what adults do. Ever see a kid talking on the phone, mimicking their parents, speaking in baby-talk even before they can construct sentences? Ever see kids pretend to go to work? Ever see kids pushing a much-too-big-for-them shopping cart in a grocery store, putting items into it?

Kids copy our behaviour. They copy our good habits, our patterns of speech, and our kindness. And like the video, they copy our biases, our prejudices, and our bad habits. We model the world for our kids.

A funny aside to this is that parents will think to themselves, “I’m going to be a better parent than my own.” They reflect on things their parents did and think of different or better ways to raise their own kids. But this hilarious cartoon describes the end result:

Jokes aside, it matters how good our parents were, and it matters how good we are as parents. Our kids will take from us some good values and lessons that we intentionally give them, but they will also take a multitude of lessons from watching us and learning from us whether we intend them to or not. We are their role models and what children see, children do.