They’re Always Watching

I was sitting on the couch watching Toy Story 5 today, and I realized that probably sounds a little funny. Why am I watching a kids’ movie by myself?

Honestly, because I want to watch it.

But I also want to watch it before I watch it with my kids.

That thought actually led me down a whole rabbit hole about parenting, the things we allow into our home, the things our kids watch, and the things they learn from us without us even realizing they’re learning them.

I’ve always been pretty intentional about what Tallulah watches. Not in the sense that she lives in some perfectly protected bubble where she can’t watch anything spooky or silly or different from what we believe.

Luke and I actually grew up pretty differently when it came to that.

There were a lot of things Luke wasn’t allowed to watch growing up because of his parents’ religious beliefs. We’ve talked about that a lot, and we’ve always known that we don’t want to parent that way.

We aren’t going to tell Tallulah she can’t watch a cartoon because it has a vampire in it. If she wants to watch Vampirina, she’s not suddenly going to become a vampire worshipper. She’s a toddler watching a cartoon about a little girl who happens to be a vampire. We know the difference between fantasy and reality, and we trust that God knows the difference too.

But that doesn’t mean we let her watch absolutely anything.

There are certain shows and types of content that we just don’t want influencing her. Things like shows that constantly turn bad behavior into entertainment, or content that’s basically just children opening toys, doing challenges, screaming, acting out, and getting rewarded with attention for it.

Cocomelon is a good example of something we’ve personally chosen not to make a part of her media diet. It’s not because we think the show is evil. It’s because we’ve watched enough to know that some behaviors we don’t want to reinforce are presented as funny, cute, or entertaining.

And at this age, kids are incredibly impressionable.

So if Tallulah finds something she’s never watched before and wants to watch it, we don’t necessarily say no. One of us will listen while she’s watching it. If we’re all sitting together and she picks something, we’ll watch it with her.

If we like it, it gets added to the list of things she’s allowed to watch by herself.

If we don’t like something about it, we turn it off and pick something else.

It’s really not complicated.

We’re not trying to control every single thing she will ever see. We’re just paying attention to what we’re allowing into her world while we’re still the ones who get to make most of those decisions.

And honestly, that’s only one part of it.

Because our kids aren’t just learning from television.

They’re learning from us.

I realized that in a way that genuinely broke my heart the first time it happened.

I have a bad habit of saying, “I don’t want to hear that.”

Sometimes Luke and Tallulah are being loud and silly, and I’ve had a long day, and I just don’t want to hear the noise anymore. Even when it’s happy noise. Even when nobody is actually doing anything wrong.

So I’ve said it.

And then one day I heard Tallulah playing with her dolls, and one of the dolls was being loud or crying.

And Tallulah said, “I don’t want to hear that.”

My first thought was, Oh no.

Not because she had done something terrible.

Because I knew exactly where she got it.

That was me.

I had taught her that sentence without ever sitting down and teaching it to her.

And that’s when you realize just how closely these little people are watching us.

They don’t need us to formally teach them something.

They hear the way we talk to our spouses. They hear the way we talk when we’re frustrated. They watch how we treat animals. They watch how we respond when somebody annoys us. They watch what we do when we’re tired.

And then they play it back.

Tallulah has done things with our dog that we’ve had to correct too. If she pops Maze on the nose for no reason, we’re going to tell her no. Maze isn’t doing anything wrong. We don’t hit someone just because we’re annoyed with them.

But even those moments are reminders that we’re constantly teaching.

Sometimes intentionally.

Sometimes completely accidentally.

And that’s also why I think the environment we give our kids matters so much.

I’ve worked in childcare and education for more than four years, and one thing I’ve noticed over and over again is how different children can be.

Obviously, every child is their own person. Temperament, personality, development, genetics, school, siblings, friends, and so many other things play a role in who a child becomes.

But I do think you can see the fingerprints of a child’s environment.

I saw that with Tallulah.

She spent her entire first year at home with me, and we didn’t just sit around all day.

We did sign language. We did workbooks and flashcards. We went places. We got out of the house. We talked to people. We played. We read. We interacted.

And now she’s an incredibly social little girl.

She’ll wave at strangers. She wants to talk to everybody. She loves having conversations. She pays attention to everything. She knows so much and is constantly trying to tell us about it.

The waving at strangers part isn’t always my favorite trait, obviously. 😂

But I also know where a lot of that confidence came from.

She had a childhood where interacting with people was normal.

And then when she started daycare, she took off.

She was ready to make friends. She wanted to participate. She loved crafts. She was comfortable being around other adults and children.

At the same time, she’s also really good at playing independently.

Sometimes we offer to play with her and she basically says, “No thanks,” and goes to her room to play by herself.

And that’s okay too.

She doesn’t need us to entertain her every second of the day.

That doesn’t mean we’re not involved parents. If anything, I think having parents who interact with you can actually give you the confidence to eventually be comfortable without them.

And that’s something I’ve seen the opposite of too.

I’ve met children who struggle to function without a parent right beside them. Children who have a hard time entertaining themselves for more than a few minutes. Children who don’t know what to do when nobody is actively directing their play.

That doesn’t mean those children have bad parents, and it certainly doesn’t mean every child’s personality can be explained by how interactive their parents are.

But I do think there is something important about giving children opportunities to interact, explore, communicate, play, and eventually learn how to do those things without us.

And then there is another part of this that I think deserves its own conversation someday: school.

Because as much as I did with Tallulah at home, there were things she didn’t learn from me.

Then she started preschool, and suddenly she was picking up things I had been trying to teach her for months.

And the funniest part was that I was literally working in the same classroom.

She was still learning more from the teacher.

She was learning from the other children.

She was watching how they played. She was listening to how they communicated. She was learning classroom routines. She was making connections that simply weren’t possible at home in the same way.

It was honestly amazing to watch.

And that is why I feel so strongly that there is a difference between childcare and early childhood education.

Children don’t just need somewhere to go while their parents work.

They need opportunities to learn from people other than their parents.

They need other children.

They need different adults.

They need new environments.

They need experiences that challenge them in ways their home environment sometimes can’t.

I’ll probably write an entire post about that someday because I have a lot to say about early childhood education.

But for now, I think the bigger point is this:

Our children are always learning.

They’re learning from the shows we let them watch.

They’re learning from the shows we turn off.

They’re learning from how we talk.

They’re learning from how we handle frustration.

They’re learning from how we treat each other.

They’re learning from how we treat animals.

They’re learning from how we play with them.

They’re learning from what we do when we’re busy.

They’re learning from what we do when we’re tired.

They’re learning from other children.

They’re learning from their teachers.

They’re learning from the environments we put them in.

And sometimes they’re learning things we never meant to teach them.

I don’t think intentional parenting means getting everything right.

If it did, I’d already be failing.

I’ve literally heard my own words come out of my three-year-old’s mouth and thought, Okay, maybe I need to work on that.

That’s the point.

We’re not going to be perfect parents.

But we can pay attention.

We can notice what our kids are absorbing.

We can change our own behavior when we realize we’ve modeled something we don’t actually want them to repeat.

We can watch the movie before we watch it together.

We can turn off the show that doesn’t sit right with us.

We can get down on the floor and play.

We can let them play by themselves too.

We can give them opportunities to meet people, learn from other children, and experience things outside of our homes.

Because they’re always watching.

And honestly, that’s one of the most humbling parts of parenting.

They’re not just watching what we tell them to do.

They’re watching what we do.