Helena is now 8 years old and my husband and I are beginning to notice she’s looking further afield than her family for role models – she’s looking for someone to look up to, to inspire her. When she was younger she always looked up to either my husband and myself or to close family members, and just like all the parenting books say, ‘we need to practise what we preach’, I’d like to think we all did. We have shown her feelings like happiness (and sadness), consideration, self respect, patience, self-discipline, kindness, and encouragement. I’d also like to think we’ve shown her the appreciation of good food, the magic of travelling and exploring new places, the ability to make new friends and have an open mind to arts and culture. And I suppose we’ve naturally (instinctively) shown her who would make good friends and who we’d rather her not to hang out with.
But it wasn’t until I read an article about the incredible ballerina, Michaela dePrince, in an on-flight magazine recently that I started thinking about role models. In the article, Michaela explained she had always wanted to be an inspiration to young girls, and it reminded me that there are so many great role models for young children — people who will mould children and help them make healthy choices and achieve goals. Like Emma Watson, for instance, who is such a tremendously talented actress and well-read young women, or Jamie Oliver who has put the ‘bish, bash, bosh’ back into cooking, and Oliver Jeffers who creates the most wonderful illustrations.
It’s really had me thinking lately, and I’ve started asking friends who their children’s role models are. Those with boys have confidently said sports people – Beckham and Federer amongst a few others. I asked my nephews and they said Epke Zonderland (who is a Dutch gymnast) and Paul van Loon (who is a Dutch writer). A few friends of Helena’s have said their class teacher and their Brownie leader which pleased me that it’s not just the media where children find their role models.
Perhaps to a point, we as parents are still influencing our children. I’d say I’m still giving Helena some guidance, for example I won’t allow her to watch MTV because there are so many negative role models out there too! I do see that her independence is increasing when she listens to her own choice of music, we encourage her to develop her sports abilities and talk of sports people who do strive in their field, we read books making a point to notice who the author is (and illustrator) and we continue to visit art galleries where’s shes now becoming more familiar with artists.
So who are your children’s role models? Are they in the media or part of their social circle? Do you encourage them to find positive ones? How do you feel about negative role models? I’d love to know your thoughts….please share.
Vanessa x
PS The image above is taken from the magazine with the article of Michaela DePrince
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