My role in language devlopment

While working on my reading response I realized how big of an impact I have on language development in children, even now as a sophomore in college. I work as an aftercare worker and I am a babysitter. I never realized how much my language and vocabulary affects the children I care for. What I say affects how they use and view words and sounds. I already have noticed the three year olds at aftercare repeating what I say. As a discipline measure, if a child does something wrong and is continuing to do it after I tell them not to I count to three. Now the three year olds also count to three when other children are doing something wrong. I think this is a good example of behaviorism and imitating someone's speech, but it is also an example of how my language affects the children I am around daily. I also now realize how I use the social interactionist perspective by altering my speech to fit the children I am talking to. I pause, I wait, I ask open  ended questions, all so they understand me better and learn. Now that I have more of an awareness of this, I think I will try my best to offer a language rich environment for better language development.