"Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind. We desire what others desire because we imitate their desires.”
-René Girard
We’ve reached a predictable sibling stage with our kids, aged one and nearly three. Our younger daughter now wants whatever her older sister has. It doesn’t matter if she’s perfectly happy playing with her blocks, if her sister walks in with a different toy or a book or really anything at all, suddenly she wants it too. Her little fists clench in frustration before pointing emphatically - give me that!
This is entirely natural. Babies and young children learn through imitation and keen observation. As my little soon-to-be-toddler tries to grapple with the world and especially with the many social dynamics at play, even in our little family, she looks at what her sister wants and has and decides that’s what I want too.
This instinctual inclination to want what others want can help us form healthy habits. It’s one of the reasons family meals can be so important. Children are much more interested in eating when they see their parents eating, too. Sometimes my toddler will even want ‘Mama’s food’ simply because it is on my plate (it could be exactly the same meal). She gets a thrill of delight when she takes a drink of ‘Mama’s water’ and she is especially happy now that we have started making tea together and can companionably sip hot mugs of mint chamomile while reading a book. She knows I like tea, so she wants tea too. And the one year old is much more likely to finish the food in front of her if we’re sharing the same meal. Hey Mama thinks it tastes good, so it must taste good! I want that!
Both children are, even at this very young age, preparing for adulthood. My older daughter especially is trying to make sense of the often confusing actions of adults - why some things are okay and other things aren’t. Why some things are okay for mamas and dadas but not okay for babies or kids. Many times the fact that she mimics me can result in hilarious and sweet moments - like when she grabs one of my books and flips the pages, breathing deep, and says with incredible seriousness, “smells so good!” Or when she comes up to me and tells me she’s “exhausted like a Mama.” But this constant mimicry, this living with a walking-talking-repeating mirror of yourself, can be a bit overwhelming at times. Any slip of the tongue, any exasperated moment, may be noted, filed away, repeated.
This pattern of watch-want-repeat doesn’t go away as we get older. As Catholic philosopher René Girard wrote,
“We don't even know what our desire is. We ask other people to tell us our desires. We would like our desires to come from our deepest selves, our personal depths - but if it did, it would not be desire. Desire is always for something we feel we lack.”
It is one of the more frightening aspects of adulthood, when we suddenly realize why we want the things we want. Even the things, as Girard says, that we think are “from our deepest selves, our personal depths,” may, when truly interrogated, have been planted there by mimetic desire that had very little to do with our natural inclinations.1 And again, it is important to note, this imitation-want cycle is not always bad. In the Catholic tradition we quite purposefully cultivate a devotion to the saints, in many ways, to want what they want - full unity with God and a love-filled life here on earth. And there is nothing wrong with my kids wanting the things I want, except when there’s something wrong with the things I want.
I read this really excellent article from
, “It’s the Adults, not the Kids!” It really honed in on an important point here. Kids want what their parents want (yes even teenagers who on the outside shudder at this idea). And when their parents spend the majority of their time on their phone, well, guess what, the kids want the phone too.“Maybe the pressing question is not, “How do I get my kid off her phone?”, but rather, “How can I get off my own phone so that my kid doesn’t see that as normal?’”
I don’t want this to come off as parenting advice because by and large I really resent parenting advice. I also have very small children and a thousand and one challenges to navigate ahead of us.2 I very much understand the sentiment little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. But I’m simply observing, even at such young ages, that my daughters are watching what I do.3
Some of that makes me proud. I think it’s a natural inclination of hers so I can’t take too much credit (my younger daughter at least so far is much more likely to throw a book than look at it, for example), but I really do love that my toddler wants to read like I do. She will pick up one of my novels and curl up in the reclining chair and flip the pages, because that’s what she’s seen me do. (she will also pick up my phone and say “just a second, I’m texting,” so there’s that.)4
And of course I’m not her only role model. She wants to play the guitar and the piano like her Dad (and she’s pretty good!). She wants to ‘teach’ her little sister like her teachers do at Nature School. And she wants to listen to the music we like to listen to (parents, you can pretend Raffi doesn’t exist! your kids won’t know the difference - spare yourselves and enjoy some good music! Toddlers also love Bach and Bob Dylan). She also wants to be like the characters in her books and act out her favorite scenes.5 She wants to roar like Rory the lion and run away from Mr. McGreggor like Peter Rabbit. She also quite frequently wants to be Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, and write books like she does.
I’ve been writing about imitation and mimetic desire somewhat interchangeably, though they are a bit different. It’s one thing for a child to simply ‘act out’ the actions of adults and another for them to want what adults want. Mimetic desire goes a bit deeper than this often very sweet toddler imitation, because it gets to the root of our very selves. I think Girard was right to define Man as the “creature who does not know what to desire.” We want to know the right thing to want.
And Instagram and Substack and all the scrolling we do will tell us. You want to bake sourdough. You want to be an executive. You want to be an activist. You want to make x amount of money. You want ten kids. You want no kids.
As someone who has radically, deeply changed my mind about pretty foundational ideas at a number of key points in my life, there can be some serious whiplash when you simply sub in a new set of desires for the last set that didn’t work out.
What do we want? What do we want our children to want?
These are two questions we need to constantly ask ourselves.
Personally I’m grateful my kids are forcing me to ask some very important questions. Are my actions showing the truth of my desires? Sometimes, yes, sometimes, no. But it’s worth asking. It’s worth trying.
Because when we decide we want goodness and truth and beauty and hope and love, our kids might just want that too.
Hi, I’m Katie, a writer and podcaster and I believe that literature, art, beauty, theology, and wonder are worth our time and attention. This essay was free for you to read, but took time and research to write - consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support the work I do.
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I touched on this subject with
in our recent podcast interview which is what had me initially start thinking some more about this topic.In other words, I do not claim to know what I’m doing here!
wow, that sounded kind of creepy! but you get what I mean.
I should also say, I don’t think pretending tech doesn’t exist or that I never use my phone is the goal either. I just want my kids to see it have its proper place in life.
Great piece, thank you for this, Katie! This is just one of the (really big) reasons why raising children, if we're doing it right, inevitably makes us better people. It's difficult, but it is also a gift if we choose to see it that way.
This was transcendent, Katie. I enjoyed this piece so much.