What this clip and see if you can stop yourself from
giggling.
What makes this baby imitate a dog?
It is certainly not because doggy treats smell good.
Infants are continually watching our
actions and committing them to memory. This is an amazing thing given the fact
their brains are still learning how to create and retrieve long term memories.
Infants are even born able to imitate as research on babies less than two days
old shows infants imitating facial expressions.
Research has shown us that infants
have four basic ways of learning. They mature and develop skills such as large
motor skills. They learn from trial and error. They learn from exploration, and
they learn from imitation.
Yup! The same infant who has
difficulty getting his fist reliably into his mouth is learning by watching
you. They learn these lessons and can repeat these actions even in different settings.
The interesting thing found in research is that even when adults make mistakes
in demonstrating something, the infants will often imitate the action without
the mistake. In fact, one study showed that infants remembered the action
better if there was a mistake. Perhaps it required more thinking to watch,
interpret, correct and execute what was seen. (Meltzoff, 1999)
This is good news for parents. It
means that we do have a strong influence on our children – an even stronger
influence than the family dog!
It means that children are learning
from us, even when we do not see evidence of that learning. What children learn in a loving family is
what is buried deep in the neural connections of the brain.
Use this learning/teaching gift God
has given you. What can you model for your children today?
Be imitators of me, as I am of
Christ. I Corinthians 11:1, ESV
