The dangers of copycats

I wasn't totally paying attention to the argument going on both next to and behind me in the car the other day; I know that AJ was insisting on something, and Mrs. M was insisting that he'd have to wait. After some back and forth AJ gave an exasperated sigh. "Fine," he said in the tone of voice I was expecting to have to wait until his teens to hear.

 

Not ten seconds later, B, the two-and-a-half-year-old pipes up. "Mammy. Mammy. MAMMY."

 

"Yes, B?"

 

"Fine," he says, a pitch-perfect mimic of his brother.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I live in a house of copycats.

 

There have been signs of this for weeks, but it's only in the past few days that it has really started to take hold, although there has been hero worship for even longer than that. There’s not quite three and a half years between them, so more often than not if AJ does, says or gets something, B wants the same as his big brother because big brothers are the coolest (or so I tell myself as the eldest of four). Anything AJ can do, B can also do (in an adorable not-quite-grasping-it way).

 

AJ himself is the same way. Half the conversations between myself and Mrs. M get interrupted with "what does [thing we just said] mean?" If we use an interesting word or phrase, it will get parroted back, frequently out of context, but more often than not, correctly.

 

When I read bedtime stories I do the voices, and AJ has taken to learning them, as he has done with cartoons. If you ever get to meet him, ask him to do his Joker from Batman: The Animated Series. It's dead on. If imitation and repetition are a good way to learn, he'll go far because everything gets repeated.

 

It does mean, however, that we have to watch what we say, do and show them at all times because EVERYTHING seems to get repeated. One Friday afternoon I made a smart-alecky remark about how AJ's teacher copes with 35 six- and seven-year-olds on a daily basis (I may have implied heavy drinking) and had to spend the rest of the weekend desperately trying to ‘reprogram’ it into a joke he could safely repeat in the yard on Monday. Please don't ask me how I did it, because I really don't know.

 

Don't think, however, that I'm not sneakily trying to capitalise on this. If they're going to copy me I'm going to take advantage of it and try to form them in my own image. Right now Star Wars is cool because Dad likes Star Wars (though I suspect it's now cool because Seán or Oisín or Darragh likes Star Wars.) I have no idea if I can extend this to doing homework or eating vegetables, although given my history with both, I suspect not.

 

But as all dads must realise, there's a limited window in which I am someone they think they should imitate before I devolve into ‘that eejit’. If during that time I can exert influence just by being me and somehow making that look like a good thing, then by golly that's what I'm going to do for as long as I wield this sort of power.

 

Because let's be honest – this ain't gonna last.