One of my daughters is a big fan of the reality show “America’s Next Top Model.” I, myself, cannot understand the appeal of the program, but the other day while she was watching it, I realized that one of my “issues” with the reality television programs is that I feel as though they model such horrible human behavior. As much as I wish that my children were not exposed to such self-absorbed, selfish, immature, and irresponsible behaviors (to say the very least), I cannot always control that. All that I can control is my own behaviors and hope that I am modeling my core values and being a role model for at least some of what I hope my children take with them into adulthood.
Of course, I am as flawed and as human as the next person—but as a parent and a human I have endless opportunities to try. During the course of an ordinary day, we parents have one opportunity after another to model for our children what is acceptable and desirable behavior. We can choose to be loving, patient, consistent, compassionate, or any number of other human qualities and we get to choose (over and over again) how we want to set an example for our children.
I learned years ago that I was not going to be able to control every influence and questionable role model that came into my children’s lives—from teachers to friends to neighbors to coaches, I knew there were going to be plenty of people with different value systems and different ways of being. This does not even take into account all the media influences and television programs. All I can do as a parent is to try to model and represent what I would like my children to emulate and then, all I can do is hope for the best.