A Role Model who Inspires children

Having a role model is healthy and helps serve as an inspiration to a child. Importance of role models in your child’s life is that they can help your child aim high and work to achieve goals. But it is important that your child choose a good role model, a person who has overcome adversity in their own life and achieved things. A role model does not have to be someone famous. It could be a Little League Coach, a grandparent, teacher, or neighbor. Often a person who actually interacts with a child makes a better role model than a sports or movie star. A role model can have a positive impact upon a child's life in various ways.

When we are growing up we look to our role models for inspiration and use this as a blueprint for how we should behave when we’re older. This is likely a survival function designed to help us to mimic the traits of those successful members of our society and thereby help us to be successful too. At the same time in later life its thought that our happiness is very much based on our perception of how our life should or could be and the gap between that and how it is in reality. In other words it’s striving for that same kind of success and achieving it that brings us happiness or otherwise when we’re older.

What all makes someone a role model? Is it only the characteristics they have or the behavior or their success? There are lot more things which make some one role model or someone can be imitated.

Role models show passion for their work and have the capacity to infect others with their passion. Role models live their values in the world. Children admire people who act in ways that support their beliefs.  It helps them understand how their own values are part of who they are and how they might seek fulfilling roles as adults. Related to the idea that role models show a commitment to their communities, students also admired people for their selflessness and acceptance of others who were different from them. Young people develop the skills and abilities of initiative when they learn to overcome obstacles.  Not surprisingly, they admire people who show them that success is possible. 

Children develop as the result of many experiences and relationships. Role models play an important role in inspiring kids to learn, overcome obstacles, and understand that positive values can be lived each day. Whether you are a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, teacher, civic leader, clergy member, sports coach, after-school program leader, or a person who just happens into a child’s life, you have the ability to inspire!