How Children Learn
by Anne Beaty

We all know the truism that children learn what they live. A child raised in an abusive household is many times more likely to become an abuser than a child raised in a non-abusive household. Children who are molested are at great risk of becoming molesters. Children who are constantly bullied at home, will tend to be bullies at school.

Yet, there is another part of this, a part that was brought home to me in the scariest way possible.

I had taken my son and goddaughter to Lake Tahoe for a ski trip. They wanted to experience New Year’s Eve amongst the crowds. They were 14 and 15, good kids. So I dropped them downtown, set up a meeting place in case they got separated, and left them there. Two hours later, I got a frantic call from my son: they’d become separated, and he couldn’t find her.

After 6 hours of driving and walking and asking and looking, I finally spotted her walking in the direction of our house. She was fine: she’d been rescued by some college girls who had taken her under their wing, given her a bed, and pointed her in the right direction. What did I learn from this? That you cannot make assumptions. Her mother (in LA) and I both ‘assumed’ when she realized she was lost, she would call home.

That had never crossed her mind, she said later. It had never crossed my mind to tattoo our Tahoe phone number on her arm.

The lesson I learned was that children only learn what you teach them. This manifests itself around every corner: the fact that you don’t steal does not necessarily communicate to the child that stealing is wrong: s/he needs to hear you say those words. If you are clear and verbal regarding your ethical stances, then you are providing your child a template against which to judge his/her decisions. Yes, they’re watching you.

they can spot hypocrisy a mile away. But they need to hear, clearly and constantly, what you stand for.

I smoke cigarettes (I can already hear the screams of outrage!) People used to ask me: how can you expect your child or students to listen to you about smoking when you smoke; that’s hypocritical. My response always was that I said “I’m not ready to quit, but I wish I’d never started”. My son is a rabid antismoker, and not one of the children/teens in my care ever started smoking ‘because you do.’

The older they get, the harder it is to resist peer pressure.
They will give in to it, they will make mistakes, they will do things that are against your moral code. This is all part of growing up, of finding out their own moral codes. If you have managed to build a bridge to your teen, s/he will, even if months later, bring up the incident. This is your chance to NOT react, punish, yell, but to thank them for telling you, and to state again your position. And to acknowledge how hard it is to resist peer pressure, to learn to act according to their own ethical code.

C) Anne Beaty - 2005

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Anne Beaty is the single mother of one son, who graduated from Vassar college in 2005. She was a Special Education T.A. for the Los Angeles Unified School District for 10 years, middle and high school, where she dealt with learning and behaviorally challenged inner-city, minority, and immigrant students, most of whom wouldn't have known a manner if it bit them on the leg. At the moment, she is raising her 16 year old niece. Email Anne: Anne Beaty

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