Five years and an exact copy of mom....

Last week I saw a piece on TLC about five-year-olds. There they track the behavior of those children. How they behave socially, how they interact with others and how they play.

I could write several pieces about what I see there, because many things struck me. One I'll just pick out.

Mother: "I hope she gets a little more laid back. She wants so much control and for everything to go the way she wants it to. I hope this program will make her a little more relaxed.'

The mother was a police officer ...

Do I need to say more about this? It was immediately obvious to me, but probably not to that mother. She was imitating her mother exactly. Not imitating, that's something else. Then you imitate someone and then you do "yourself" again. That's something else.

No, just do it.

An exact copy of Mom. I think everyone saw it except mom herself. I guess the funny thing is that Mom does see it in other children. That those kids are exactly like their parents. But in herself?

And a lot of people have. Me included. In others, I see exactly what is wrong. How was it again? "You can see the mote in your brother's eye, but not the beam in your own?

That is.

Your children are also becoming copies of you. They're not quite that at the core, but they're going to act like it. Because that seems to work.

To work? Yes, you're big, you're old, you're alive, you can all do things your child can't, so somewhere, survival-wise, you're doing something right. What exactly that is I don't know, so I just do everything exactly the same, said the child.

And so those children begin to lose their own color at a very early age and become copies of their parents. So with your children, they become copies of you.

Then in adolescence you often see that they start to rebel against that side and start to turn away, but for the most part they stay in it. They probably get your ailments, your beliefs, your kind of relationships and you name it. You just pass it on.

So the great thing is that it's not up to those kids but up to you. Sounds harsh, but is actually quite delicious. Because so if you yourself start changing that then it changes for all your children (I have 4).

And how do you know what exactly the problem is? Look around you if you have children and if they are doing something that makes you think "Hmmm," then you have found another problem with you.