Your Child's Role Model

Role models come in all shapes and forms, they take on many identities in a child's mind, they allow your child to find a passion and someone to look to in their life for guidence and someone or something to imitate in their growing and changing life.

Role model (described by dictionary.com) a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, esp. younger people.

Who does your child look to as a role model? Who they choose to look up too may define who they choose to be like in the present or who they choose to become later on in their life.

Choosing a role model is a significant part of a persons life and is important for children, who they choose to be like or look up to can profoundly dictate the paths that they take in their lifetime.

Most of the time people think of role models as being celebrities, athletes, authors, politicians or any other significant entity veiwed on television, but what about everyday regular joes. Yes, even regular joes can be a role model in your child's life. Believe it or not teens have a rather large influence in a young child's life, the choices that they make and the lifestyle they choose can affect the way that your child precieves and even acts in their life.

Teens are a major influence in a young persons life. Younger children such as elementary aged children look up to teens in a big way, whether they be a football athlete, basketball, baseball, volleyball or a cheerleader and even non athlete teens are looked up to. Just by your child's association with a teen chances are your young child is watching. Often more times then none a teen doesn't realize that they do have younger impressionable children watching them and emulating what they do. This sets a huge standard for a teen to live by and perhaps hand in hand keep a teen walking on the straight and narrow.

When a younger child looks up to a teen that they find to be the all time best most professional athlete of the eleventh grade smoking, what will a young child do, think that it's okay to smoke and start looking for cigerettes to smoke so that they can impress their role model. "Hey look at me, I'm like my model".

Teaching your teen that they do have younger children watching them and looking up to them might be a big enough influence in the teens life to help guide them down a straight path of good choices. A lot of times teens don't realize that they do have someone always watching them hoping to someday fill their shoes. Of course the same thing goes for star athletes and movie stars however these celebs know that this is what they are portraying, that they are infact role models yet they choose the bad sometimes indecent behavior anyway. Let your teen know that there is someone always watching them and that they should be portraying themselves in a respectful manner so as not to lead a young child astray.

Smoking, drinking, drugs and yes even profanity all filters through a child, the child doesn't have mature enough consequence receptors to weed out good behavior from bad behavior to a child it's all okay. It's a big responsibility for parents to teach a child and a teen the difference in bad and good role model behavior, there is already so much on a parents plate, teaching a child what is right and wrong, what to do and what not to do, good choices and bad choices but yet it's all just part of the job description as a parent to help mold your child's mind.

Teens as well have a large responsibility to provide appropreate behavior throughout their life and adolescents don't have mature consequence receptors either. This is apart of the brain that tells you "if I make this choice this will be the outcome", this part of the brain doesn't fully mature until later on in adult life around the mid twenties. This is good practice for teens and perhaps initiative for them to think ahead and make good choices in their life.

Helping your child to choose an appropreate role model for their life is important, it can place structure and disciplin in areas where a child won't always allow parents to go. It's a sad hard fact in a parents life that there are certain perimeters' in a child's life that they don't want a parent to cross such as gray areas where a child might not feel comfortable talking to their parents about certain subjects. Sex, love, friends, school, and even questions about life and their feelings, these can all be gray areas that a child might feel more comfortable talking to a teen role model about before coming to their parent.

Parents can have both sides of the responsibility spectrum in raising their children. One parent has a teen who could be a role model and needs to teach that teen to act accordingly to the way they would want others to be proud of and the other parent has a child who looks up to a teen as a role model, this set of parents needs to talk to their child about positive and negative behavior and help them to understand that all people make mistakes and that the way this role model conducts themselves is important in deciding if this is a role model they should actually be looking up to.

Children can get twisted up in peer pressure, influences, decision making and who is the right person to follow. Decision making skills for a child is a delicate process that their brain has not yet had time to mature and fully develop. For a child knowing who the right person is to look up to can be tricky, they know someone that seems to be friendly, upstanding (in their eyes), smart, talented and all around good guy but they don't fully understand how this person may not be the best suited choice in a role model. Giving a person good characteristics such as friendly and talented doesn't always make them good candidates for being a role model, their lifestyle choices may reflect a different compass of non-role model traits, something you would not be comfortable with your child mirroring such as, smoking, drinking, partying, the way they dress, or even the way that they act outside of the public eye.

Being a role model suggests that you should have good public and private air. Teens aren't always up to this challenge because as well as children they are still trying to find themselves and have role models of their own to ape. However, it doesn't stop a young child from watching them and hoping to be like them. Young children often aspire to dress, look and even act like their favorite teen idol, be it a celebrity or a local high school teen.

How do you suggest to your child that the role model they mimic might not be the best choice in a role model?

That isn't always as easy a 1 2 3, it can take some extensive persuassion on the parents part in order to sway a child away from negative dignitaries and even local teens from school. The best idea might be just watching and studying their role model choice, maybe your son just thinks that the quarterback is really good at what he does and isn't looking any deeper into his everyday life, it might be that there is another role model that he imitates for his grades and even another he mirrors for his personal growth. Children generally aren't looking past what they see their model doing in their most prime moment, such as a Friday night football game when the quarterback threw a forty yard pass. This is more ofttimes the case, that your child is only wishing that someday they too can throw a forty yard pass and it really isn't more intimate than that.

Nevertheless there are times when a child chooses to dress or even act in compliance with their role model studying every aspect of their life in and out, public and private and in sole chooses to emulate this person down to the very same nail polish on their toes. Then the predicament can be a little more complex and convencing a child that this is not appropriate behavior for the model or for the follower is not all bread and butter. This is an opportunity to shed light and wisdom on individuality and independence. This is a more intimate situation with girls, choosing their favorite fashion model and aspiring to be like them, in far too much of a likeness. Individuality is more so what sets a role model apart from others and is why a child may choose to pick this person out of a line up to be their role model. Your child should know that individuality is what makes this role model/model good at her job and is basically true not why she picked her.

Being smart, talented, polite, understanding, kind, having good air, being honest, and being a good role model yourself is what will draw people in and get you noticed for being you. Not conforming and being like others is what employers, colleges, athletic trainers and scouts are looking for in a person, they aren't out looking for the next Tyra replica, they are looking for someone who stands out above the crowd and who can be a good model for others. Encourage your child to pick positive role models to help reflect their good qualities not just someone to imitate. Let your child know that individuality is important in their life and if they aspire to be a really good cheerleader then they should practice, learn from other cheerleaders that are talented at what they do and to just be themselves. It's okay to watch others and to learn from them but to know that their role model is an individual and if they truely aspire to be like them then they too should be independent and an individual.