I never thought I would be in this position … a close friend with a baby. I’ve had friends who’ve had children, but none of them have been really close or that I’ve known for a long time or have spent lots of time with. I had heard and had been warned that friendship dynamics change when someone has a baby … but I never wanted to believe it would happen to me. 

Okay, so my therapist Roger didn’t really break-up with me. About two months ago, I got a phone call from Roger, which is not that out of realm of possibility as he has called before when I was in the hospital for an appendectomy and after I left him as message begging to be put on anti-depressants. He called to tell me …

I’ve always been interested in my ancestors – who they were, where they were from, why they did the things they did, how they got to America. As a child I would solicit stories from my grandparents, and try to commit the details to memory. About five years ago, my brother and his wife gave our grandparents a family history book.

By “modeling behavior,” I am not referring to “striking a pose” or “looking fierce” (although I have been accused of posing like at model). In behavioral psychology terminology, modeling, sometimes referred to as social learning theory, is when “people learn new information and behaviors by watching other people,” according to Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. Usually, we think of this as something children do – they learn to eat with a fork by observing their parents at the dinner table. My niece was classic case of modeling when she picked up a watering can for the first time at age one and knew exactly what to do with it from watching her mother water flowers.

At a previous job, I trained people to give tours by “modeling” good tour practices. This is all well and good when you have someone who is modeling good behavior and the person on the receiving end is aware enough to ask questions when he or she is unsure or something seems off.  Unfortunately, some of the trainees didn’t care about what they were doing and would just repeat anything they heard or saw modeled for them. A co-worker called it “mocking” behavior. We used to laugh at how lazy and ignorant these trainees seemed. Reflecting back on my poor attitude in this situation, it seems very hypocritical now because for years I’ve demonstrated the behaviors modeled for me by my parents without asking any questions or thinking anything was wrong.