Role Modeling: Who’s Who — Otherwise Known as Teaching by Example

If I do not preach a sermon with my life, why would anyone ever listen to my words? That thought occurred to me one morning as I cleaned my kitchen and listened to Christian radio. It is true, you know: if my life and my words are in opposition to each other, my students will notice it long before I will myself. Therefore, I must “mean what I say, and say what I mean” (thank you, Horton) and “do as I say” before insisting anyone else do it also.

When an educational question arises in our house, such as “what does that word mean” or “where is that country/city,” I have taken the lead, grabbing the dictionary, atlas, or other appropriate reference material, proclaiming “Let’s find out,” and then sharing the resulting facts with my students. Over the years, this habit has had a profound effect: my children are not afraid of the dictionary! I have observed them voluntarily grabbing the dictionary and checking proper plural forms for themselves. They have even been known to browse the dictionary just in the effort to learn new words. I have also caught them with the atlas, comparing the population figures for cities around the globe, attempting to gain perspective on relative sizes.

You are your children’s role models. Children will learn by example: speech patterns, manners (including apologizing), stewardship, decision-making (including TV and movie choices), prayer, reading as a general habit (Bible-reading in particular), driving habits, etc. Your children will become like you in more ways than you or they would ever imagine. People of integrity come from seeing integrity walked out before them. If I expect my children to behave a certain way, be it with honesty and courtesy and manners, or with a spirit of giving, or speaking the truth and not lies, I must model that behavior for them. I cannot expect my children to be a better person than I am willing to be myself.

One day when my children were getting early lessons in proper speaking manners, we happened to be babysitting a neighbor girl for a few hours. As I gave them all a snack of graham crackers, I was encouraging them to ask “May I have another cracker, please?” When the neighbor child balked, repeating the question with emphasis indicating she had never before heard such language, I joyfully gushed, “Of course, you may!” to her utter astonishment. I can only imagine the dinner-table conversation at her home that evening.

My personal philosophy on public behavior is: If I do not want to accidentally do it in public, I had better not incubate the bad habit of doing it in private. Case in point, many years ago, when my husband and I had just moved to this house, I was frustrating myself with trying to get the washing machine to cooperate with the mountains of laundry we had accumulated during the packing and moving procedure. As I took the machine apart to find the drain hose twisted beyond usefulness, I heard a knock at my back door. Never expecting a welcoming committee from my new neighborhood, I answered the door wearing the worst possible charity-bin-rejects, my hair messy and dirty from handyman-duty in the basement laundry area, and emitting the nasty aura of a not-so-recent bath. Those dear ladies were very cordially trying to invite me to a welcoming tea, even though my unexpected appearance was certainly not what they wanted gracing their living rooms. I made a conscious decision that day to rid my wardrobe of anything I did not want to be caught wearing — even on laundry day.

On another side of the role-modeling coin, consider for a moment what types of posters are most frequently displayed in college students’ dorm rooms. How do the stars look in the music videos watched by most teens? What are the lifestyles of the heroes and idols of today’s pop culture? Are these really people we should respect and look up to? Do their lives reflect the values we embrace? If not, then why would we want to emulate their standards in fashion? Look intently at the message being sent by the clothing available right now in the stores near you. Even if it was not overtly intended by the designer or not intended by the person purchasing the garment, the message still comes across loud and clear. Allow me to step up on my personal soapbox to say that no one’s daughter, regardless of her age, should look like a junior streetwalker, and yet many of the garments for sale right now create just that look.

I have watched public school teachers mimic their students in language and dress in an effort to “identify” with them, only to wonder later why their students showed no respect toward them. The respect vanished because the model switched roles: the teacher began copying the student, sadly making the student the role model for the teacher.

It is a fundamental principle of human nature to look to those in leadership for cues in how to handle life. Therefore, children will naturally strive to look, act, talk, and behave like their older peers. If you are homeschooling, you are essentially part of their peer group — an older peer. Take care to set the standard yourself that you want to see in those around you: your children, their friends, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, etc., and be very careful from whom you are taking your cues.