Roll Modelling The Most Effective Teaching and Parenting Tool

Role Modelling is the most effective tool in middot development. Children are more likely to do what you do rather than just doing what you say. If you express the desire that your child regularly does a particular mitzvah, he may be excited to fulfill your request. His adherence could continue for a while until the excitement abates, and then his regularity will fall off. Periodic reminders may refocus him and he will increase adherence for a while. Without some other effective tools to enhance internalization and motivation, this effort may eventually dead end.

If accompanying your request to your child is his awareness that the mitzvah you desire for him to do is passionately fulfilled by yourselves and older siblings, his commitment to fulfill this mitzvah is likely to happen quickly, and his adherence will be steadfast.

A key factor in effective role modeling is the attitude of the role model towards the mitzvah. HaRav Moshe Feinstein, z”l, sees in Parashat Emor the doubled use of the word amar when Hashem tells Moshe Rabeinu to command the kohanim to fulfill their mitzvot. And Hashem said to Moshe, “say to the kohanim … and you shall say to them.” Rashi comments that the double wording is to include the added commandment to the Kohanim that they must teach their duties to the children. Rav Moshe questions the effectiveness of the implied chinuch strategy of just “saying” to the children. Should we assume, that children will begin practice just by the parents “saying”? Rav Moshe concludes the double wording is meant to inspire the parents to have an enhanced practice. The first “saying” is to command the mitzvot and the second “saying” is to inspire fulfillment with passion and excitement making the parents ideal role models for their children.

The superiority of role modeling over verbal requests and reminders is brought home in the following situation told over by Rabbi Yissachar Frand in his personal life. He tells the story that one summer morning he was eating his breakfast with one of his children prior to his walk to the bet midrash at Ner Yisroel. As he made his way through an open field in almost severe heat and humidity, which Baltimore is known for, he began to question whether he recited the bircat hamazon before leaving. He finally concluded that he had not and now the internal debate began, what should he do? Should he stop and say it in the middle of his walk or return to his home and recite it there, which is the preferred approach according to Jewish law. Despite the heat, he chose to go back. While he was reciting the blessings, the child he ate with walked through the kitchen and surprisingly looked at her father. When he finished the recital, she asked him, “why did you come home, you just left.” He said, “I came home because I forgot to bentch.” She responded, “You came home because you forgot to bench???

Rabbi Frand commented that this one situation for his daughter was a more powerful learning experience for the importance of making berachot than all the thousands of reminders he had given her over many years.

As mentioned, role modeling is the most effective method for guiding children in the development of their middot. It’s because, as we previously mentioned, middot are completely thought-based, habits of the mind. They are the thoughts behind human actions, not the actions themselves. Middot are abstract concepts not concrete. Children generally lack the mental capacity to grasp abstract ideas without concrete supports. Impressionistic learning is an excellent concrete tool for young children to grasp ideas and thoughts. Role modeling is a most effective impressionistic strategy.

Anyone that children can identify with can become their role models. However, it’s those people, who have the strongest emotional connections to them and spend the most time with them, who are the greatest influences in their lives. That makes parents, other close relatives and teachers potentially the most effective role models for young children. This is an important idea when considering the task of shaping the character of a child during his formative years. Consistent messaging both covert and overt, consciously and subconsciously is essential.

In previous generations children spent the vast majority of time in their first five years of life at home, the critical period for the establishment of character. Parents and grandparents formed an exclusive highly effective cadre of influencers and molders of character. In recent history, young children have been sent from the home to nurseries and daycare centers potentially disrupting the fine-tuned process of character development. As a result, it places great responsibility on parents to choose programs that are congruent with the values of their home. It also places responsibility on these programs to provide strong character development education and see themselves as true partners with the home in this endeavor.

One final point about role modeling, parents and their team must sincerely reflect the values they want their children to possess. Don’t think those desired values and middot only need to be on display when the children are around, The Gemara tells us that children are granted a form of prophecy. The Nesivos Shalom writes “the young have a highly developed spiritual sense of smell, as it were, and an “emotional instinct that enables them to penetrate to the deepest recesses of the educator’s mind and soul and sense his innermost thoughts.” This idea should alert those tasked with the responsibility to guide children in the development of their character to understand themselves and work on deficient areas preferably before the young clients appear on the scene.