Have you ever bought a fast pass at a waterpark? You know the ones, you pay a bit extra and you get to skip the queues. Everyone without one joins the longest queue, you don't.
It was half term this week and we went to a waterpark. It was packed with kids, we got sunburnt and stayed about an hour longer than we should have. It was a really good day. At the entrance I bought fast pass wristbands without really thinking about it and for most of the day we were absolutely delighted to have them.
Then in the afternoon a new ride opened. There was already a queue of kids waiting who had got there before us. We walked straight past them and got on first because of our wristbands. It felt awkward for so many different reasons.
We have known from decades of research, going back to Albert Bandura's work on social learning theory in the 1970s, that children learn far more from what they see than from what they hear. And our teenagers are no exception, even when it really feels like they have stopped paying attention.
When we walked past those kids I hadn't said a word. But without meaning to I had shown that the queue is just a suggestion if you have the right wristband.
I am not writing this with any kind of judgement. The fast pass is fine and we had a lovely day. But our teenagers are paying more attention than we think. And what they take from us is often something we never meant to give, like the moment you walk past a queue of kids who got there before you did.
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