“I know the code to your phone.”
My granddaughter smiled up at me. When she wakes in the morning, she comes to sit on my lap to wake up a little more. I don’t know why I had my phone in my hand at that time, but after she said that, I put it down. She didn’t wait for me to doubt her; she proceeded to give me the code, correctly. Crap.
My granddpuppies have electronic devices that they use to connect to the world outside of themselves; my grandson plays an online game with his cousin and Imani is hooked on cooking shows. (She’s 6: of course she would be hooked on cooking shows.) Eleven-year-old Xavion uses his cellphone to review the last 100 years of incredible basketball plays, and to text me to tell me he has a math problem that he knows I cannot help him with. Imani has a tablet (a “Kindle Fire HD,” she crisply notes). Their access to those devices is set by their parents; their access to my cellphone and laptop is set by me, which is nada, zero, none. Which is why I tried to fool Imani into thinking that she as wrong about my cellphone lock-code. I secretly changed it and she tried it and told me, “You changed it!”
Kids are always watching us. Our first interactions with them are tactile, but as they learn to focus their new eyes, we add sight to our bag of tricks, and teach them to learn by watching us. As they grow, we are happy to see them mimic us, until one day we are not. We forget that we’ve taught them to watch, and when we do things we don’t want them to learn, we go into “do what I say, not what I do” mode. But they’re the little spies of our lives.
When my youngest daughter, Lauren, was small, she asked me, “Daddy, why do you do this?” She then mimicked the mouth movements I make when I am having a discussion with my mind. I wasn’t aware that the conversation had leaked out and onto my face. My son told me in later years that when he was young and visiting me in my office (I was the assistant creative director in retail advertising), he thought that my responsibilities were to stare at a computer screen, lower my head into my palms and say, “Oh, you guys!”
The kids are always watching. I know, I know: most of the parents out there are saying, “This is news?” (They’re listening too; every parent has heard a toddler repeat “ratsoflatsorixeratter!”) But they are definitely watching, which is why it is important for us to model the behavior we want them to emulate. I was both proud and furious that Lauren and Chris had given money to a beggar on the street (despite the “DON’T TALK TO STRANGERS!” edict). But they had watched me help others, and wanted to do as I had done. The message needed a little more work, but it always does.
The next time I saw my grandbeauties, Xavion sang a song I taught him when he was 3, a rap that taught him his home address. Eight years later, he still remembered my song. I had turned a poem written for my grade-school teacher friend into a bouncy song about reading that she used in her class. I thought that I could do no less for my grandson. But my warm and fuzzies were jolted when Imani said, again, “I know the code to your phone.”
Crap.