When my son was about six months old, I decided it was about time to teach him sign language. He couldn’t communicate with words and I don’t speak screaming baby so we needed to find a new system. For weeks, I would touch my fingers together trying to teach him “more”. I would fold my hands under my head when it was time for him to sleep. I would open and close my fist before I nursed him. Every day, over and over again, I would try to teach him the same three simple signs; I figured if I started small, he could grow from there. After weeks of repetition and no signs of my son picking anything up, I stopped signing to him.

One morning, about two months after I gave up on baby sign language, we were Skyping with my mom and Baby was begging for some of my sandwich. I gave him a little piece and he finished chewing it, looked over at me, and touched his fingers together–the sign for “more”.

At first I was confused. I hadn’t signed anything to him in months–how did his tiny brain even remember? Then he did it again and again and then again. Obviously, babies are smarter than I give them credit for.

That was the day I truly realized my son was watching me. Not just looking at me, but paying attention. Learning.

My son’s new favorite activity is climbing up on the sofa, crawling over the side table where I keep my computer because I don’t have a desk, and banging on the keyboard. He has so many other things he can play with, all far easier to reach, but he only wants the keyboard. Why? Because I’m a mommy blogger and I work my own business from home. I spend a sizeable amount of my time typing on my keyboard and my son sees that. I know he’s watching me because when he gets to the keyboard he knows what to do. He doesn’t pick it up and he doesn’t try to shove it in his mouth like he does with every other thing in the house–he has his own clunky baby version of typing.

He also will do anything to get his grubby little hands on my phone. It isn’t that he wants to play games and he doesn’t even care about the screen; we know because he’s just as happy when the phone is turned off. The reason is that he sees Mommy and Daddy on their phones and he wants it too.

I have a black headband that I use on those days I haven’t showered and my hair is all over the place. One day he grabbed it out of my hands and started trying to pull it over his head. I had never showed him how to use it but he had been observing me and he noticed.

We know that our children learn from us, but do we realize that they are learning so much more than we are consciously teaching them? I never taught my son to type or put on a headband, and even though I did teach him baby sign language it took him months before he showed signs of learning. His brain was storing all I was showing him and I had no idea.

So now I can no longer uses the “he’s not paying attention” excuse. He sees the way people are acting around him. He hears the language that comes with being around Marines. He is listening to the conversation. He is watching what we watch. He feels the tension when I’m overwhelmed or upset. While he is learning all the good things, he is also learning the bad, and as his mother, it is my responsibility to guide his immature mind as he learns right and wrong and as he makes his determinations about what is “normal” and what is not.

I’m not going to sugar coat it, the Marine Corps culture–at least in the circles my lower enlisted husband runs in–tends to be crass and immoral. Coworkers spend their nights at strip clubs and share their craziest stories about Vegas escapades around the table. When they’re not drinking, they’re talking about drinking, and sometimes the language is so terrible I wonder if they’re intentionally trying to use as many profanities as possible in one sentence. It’s everywhere–I was listening to it at the Marine Corps ball, I hear it coming from the tables next to me at restaurants, I see it on Friday and Saturday nights. Even though my husband does not participate, it’s all around him. when I’m around other Marines, it surrounds me too.

And it’s all around my son.

My husband found new friends when he switched duty stations and by golly they are so different from some friends he’s had in the past. They have goals, dreams, ambitions, morals; still, the language is inescapable. I ask them not to use that language in our house, especially around my son, and I know they make an effort to respect that but it still happens. They’re always around other people who talk like them–they’re not used to having to watch their words. I understand and don’t get me wrong, I love my husbands friends, but I don’t want my baby to learn from them.

Still, I want my husband to have his friends over at our house. I want to remind them what a loving marriage looks like, what it’s like to be part of a happy family, how being in a real home feels. I want them to be at my dining room table laughing and tickling the baby and listing to Irish music and playing poker with poker chips instead of spending their Friday nights blacked out in their barracks. These guys aren’t around families and we can’t replace that for them but we can at least share our home and share Jesus with them while we do it.

They love my son. They are absolutely great with him, but I don’t want him learning from them. He’s a baby–he takes in every single thing around him, good or bad, right or wrong. No, I can’t just keep my son in the bedroom either. We bought a big house to be able to host family and friends who come stay with us but also to bless the Marines with no family nearby–my husband chooses his friends wisely and they will continue to be welcome.

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Here’s the challenge: we live in a fallen world surrounded by people of this world because they haven’t been transformed by Jesus. We have to constantly and consistently fight against the culture of this world. The Marine Corps is full of Marines who call Jesus “Savior” but don’t accept him as Lord and the result is that the majority of the people I meet who call themselves Christian have conformed to the pattern on this world, the pattern of the Marine Corps. Of course, this is an issue in every part of the world, in every culture, but the Marine Corps seems to be particularly harsh. This is why I cling to our church–it is alive and growing and people there have not only a passion for Christ but clearly follow Him as Lord and you can tell because they’re different.

How is this relevant to the question of whether or not are kids are watching us?

Because we grow into the way of life that surrounds us.

The Marine Corps is obviously a more extreme example of this because from the day they step out of the bus at boot camp and stand over those yellow footprints, they are told what their identity is and how they will act. They are taught to observe and obey and they do. I know many Marines who love Jesus and live differently from this world because they follow Jesus’s commandments but I know many more who either fail to obey the Bible or have simply decided God is too much work or their worldly lifestyle is too fun to give up or they just don’t care.

Again, this is reflected throughout the whole world–but as most of us are military wives and moms or live in a place built around the military, this imagine hits particularly close to home.

As a work from home mom, the one who spends countless hours teaching, feeding, playing with, and loving on my baby boy, I am currently his biggest influence. He’s so little that he doesn’t understand he shouldn’t model everything he sees when we’re out and about, and I can’t shelter him from every single thing I don’t want him to see. That would be impractical and it would basically be him and me at home in our little bubble all the time. Instead, I need to use the world’s culture to educate him, rather than let it influence him. It is important, especially as a Christian, to understand the world around me. If we are naive and ignorant, we will not be world changers. It is equally important not to let it influence me, and this is a principle I will pass on to my children.

For now, he is too young to have proper judgement and understand the difference between education and influence, which means that I need to step up and take responsibility as his role model.

This means simple things, such as modeling cleaning up and eating fruits and vegetables rather than junk food. It means being respectful to his daddy and probably also cutting back on how much I enjoy practicing my Muay Thai on Daddy when he’s not paying attention. It means reading my Bible and praying in front of him every day, it means getting outside and limiting screen time and practicing patience. When I do raise my voice at my son to show him I’m serious, it means giving him a hug afterwards and telling him I love him. It means teaching him there are consequences when he is disobedient or mean and demonstrating both discipline and grace. One of the most important things I can teach him that he won’t understand now but he will soon is not to compromise on morals ever. Not to act like everyone around him just because it’s “normal” and “fun.” To be different because Jesus tells us to.

We grow into the way of life that surrounds us. That is why our friends, the movies we watch, the songs we listen to, the way our parents raised us, even tiny things like what is in our fridge are all important. It matters for us and it matters because that’s what our kids are around too.

What we are modeling for our children matters.

Are our kids really watching us? Is what we do around them actually important? What about the way we live our lives even when we’re not around them?

I will say it again: we grow into the way of life that surrounds us. We can use culture to educate us instead of influence us, but we need Jesus for that to happen. We need to surround ourselves with prayer and the Bible and other Jesus-loving friends and we need to be intentional about our entertainment and how we spend our time. Our kids are watching us. Our kids see what we let influence us and it influences them too because they look up to us; they want to be like us.

Seeing my son do what I do, making the same facial expressions as me, wanting to play with the same items that I use every day, learning what I’m teaching him–it’s made me more aware of how I act. It’s reminded me that he is observing and learning from me. I am his biggest influence and that is a huge responsibility but also a huge honor.

Perhaps I’ll start cleaning the bathroom more often around him. That is my least favorite chore ever and if I model it every day maybe he’ll start doing it on his own. He’s good at wiping soap all over the bathtub and playing in the toilet water so I can see his 11-month-old self learning quickly.

Probably not, but I can hope.