--- title: "52 Days to New Beginnings: Your Children Copy What You Do, So Choose the One Habit You Want Them to Catch From You" description: Children copy what their father does far more than what he says. Eight ways to choose one good habit and model it every day, 52 days before 2027. author: Dr Marina Nani (Editor-in-Chief) date: 2026-11-10T15:00:00.047Z updated: 2026-11-10T15:00:00.053Z canonical: https://richdadmagazine.com/article/52-days-to-new-beginnings-children-copy-what-you-do image: https://cdn.nanimediahouse.com/pexels-6565059.webp categories: Fatherhood, Lifestyle content_type: Guide region: United Kingdom publication: Rich Dad Magazine schema_type: Article --- Your three-year-old is sitting on the sofa with a plastic phone pressed to his ear. He frowns, nods twice and says 'Yep, yep, send it over', then puts the phone face down on the cushion and sighs. You laugh, and then you stop laughing, for that is exactly how you sound on a Sunday afternoon when work calls. You never taught him any of it. He learned it by watching you, the same way he is learning how a man speaks to a waiter, what a father does when the car in front cuts him up and whether a grown-up ever picks up a book. Every dad has a moment like this, and most of us have a few we would rather not see repeated. Fifty-two days are left of 2026, and this Rich Dad series gives you one small change a day to take into the new year, from your routines and relationships to food, books and the way you respond when the day goes wrong. Each change takes minutes, not willpower, and by 31st December you will have 52 of them in place. Day 52 starts with the one rule underneath all the others: your children copy what you do, far more than what you tell them. ## How Children Learn Habits by Watching Their Father From the age of three or four, children copy adults with remarkable precision, down to steps that serve no purpose at all. When an adult taps a box twice before opening it, most children tap it twice too, even after they have been warned that the taps are pointless. Children copy actions they see repeated as 'the way it is done'. Your daily habits work the same way. Among 12 and 13-year-olds, one of the strongest predictors of how much time a child spends on screens is how much their parents use screens around them. In younger children, a father who watches more than two hours of television on a weekday makes his child more than three times as likely to do the same. The pattern runs in your favour too. The father who reads in the evening, goes out for a run on Saturday or puts his phone away at dinner is teaching those habits every time he does them, without a single lecture. ## Watch Yourself for One Ordinary Day Before you choose a habit, spend one normal day watching yourself as your children see you. Notice when you pick up your phone, how you talk about your work, how you react to a delay and what you do with a free hour on the sofa. You do not need to judge any of it. You only need to see it, as you will choose more wisely once you know what you are already teaching. ## Choose One Habit to Keep Until the New Year Pick one habit you would be proud to see your children carry into adult life. It might be reading for twenty minutes, moving your body every day, saying thank you to people who serve you, tidying up after yourself or keeping your phone away from the table. Choose one, not five. A single habit you keep for 52 days teaches far more than five you drop by Christmas. ## Do It Where Your Children Can See It Most fathers do their best habits out of sight. You read in bed after the children are asleep, train at the gym before they wake and answer emails in the car so that you are free at home. Move your chosen habit into view. Read in the living room for twenty minutes before bedtime, do your press-ups on the lounge floor or put your phone in a kitchen drawer as you sit down to eat. A habit your children never see is a habit they cannot copy. ## Say Out Loud What You Are Doing Children copy what they see, but they understand more when you name it. Say 'I am putting my phone away so I can hear about your day' or 'I am going for a run, as it clears my head after work'. One short sentence turns an action into an example, and your children start to link the habit with the reason behind it. ## Invite Them to Join In Ask your son to bring his own book to the sofa while you read yours. Let your daughter time your plank or come for the first kilometre of your run on her bike. Give the toddler a cloth while you wipe the table. Shared habits stick better than habits that only belong to Dad. They also give you time together that does not need planning. ## Drop One Habit You Do Not Want Copied Your watching day will show you at least one thing you would rather your children did not learn. It may be scrolling at the dinner table, shouting at other drivers or calling yourself an idiot when you make a mistake. Pick that one habit and replace it with something better. Put the phone in another room at mealtimes, turn the shouting into 'he must be in a hurry' and swap the insult for 'I will do better next time'. Your children hear the new words, and in time, so do you. If the phone is the habit you want to change, our guide to [building a phone-free home](https://richdadmagazine.com/article/phone-free-home-culture) shows you where to start. ## Let Them See You Get It Wrong and Put It Right You will slip. You will scroll at breakfast or lose your temper in a traffic jam. When it happens in front of your children, say so: 'I said I would keep my phone away, and I did not. I am putting it away now.' A father who admits a slip and corrects it teaches a habit worth more than any single good behaviour: that people can change and keep trying. ## Keep Going When Nobody Seems to Notice Children rarely copy a habit straight away. Weeks of reading on the sofa may pass before your son brings his own book, and he may never mention it. The habit is still going in. Keep your one habit going every day until 31st December. By then it will be part of who you are at home, and your children will have seen it more than fifty times. On Day 51 tomorrow, you start a one-line diary about your children that takes less than a minute a night. ## At a Glance - **The rule:** your children copy what you do far more than what you say - **Watch first:** one ordinary day, seen through your children's eyes - **Choose:** one good habit to keep until 31st December - **Make it visible:** do it where your children can see it - **Name it:** one sentence about what you are doing and why - **Share it:** invite them to join in - **Drop one:** replace the habit you do not want copied - **When you slip:** say so and put it right in front of them