You’ve probably seen it—your toddler pretending to cook after watching you in the kitchen, or mimicking your sighs after a long day. It’s not just cute—it’s neuroscience. In this powerful follow-up episode, Dr. Mona sits down with educator Chris Lake to unpack mirror neurons, the brain’s fascinating mechanism for learning through observation.

Together, they explore how these neurons shape everything from crawling and speech to empathy and emotional regulation—and how everyday moments of modeling can support your child’s development more than any app ever could.

Whether you’re wondering how screen time affects speech, why your toddler copies your every move, or how to introduce new toys and skills more effectively, this conversation offers both science and simple strategies for parents to put into practice.

What You’ll Learn:

• The surprising research behind mirror neurons and observational learning

• Why our kids learn best through watching (not just being told)

• How mouth-gazing helps with speech development—and why screens fall short

• Why modeling behaviors like sharing and play matters more than we think

• The link between demonstration, confidence, and child mastery

• The truth about screen time’s impact on social and language skills

Our podcasts are also now on YouTube. If you prefer a video podcast with closed captioning, check us out there and⁠ ⁠subscribe to PedsDocTalk⁠⁠.

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00;00;00;07 – 00;00;24;01

Dr. Mona

Hello, it’s Doctor Mona and this is the follow up. The only part of your Monday that won’t involve someone asking for a snack five seconds after they eat. This episode is faster than your kiddo copying your dance moves. Or that curse word you just said when you stub your toe. And it’s way more informative. I’m joined by Chris Lake, an early childhood development expert, educator, and founder of Behavior Booster.

 

00;00;24;08 – 00;00;46;21

Dr. Mona

We’re talking about mirror neurons. Yes, the actual science behind why your kid copies everything you do from brushing your teeth to your stress face. I wanted to rerelease this episode after Vera showed me exactly how fascinating mirror neurons are. I was working out outdoors and my husband brought her and Ryaan out to play, but she loves watching me, so she sat and watched me work out.

 

00;00;46;23 – 00;01;08;29

Dr. Mona

I was doing burpees after I was done with my workout. We were all sitting and she started wandering off on the turf area of the park, and then we noticed she just dropped to her belly and was doing a burpee with the umph and all, and the hand raising mirror neurons firing. If you’ve ever wondered why your child acts like a tiny version of you, even when you wish they wouldn’t.

 

00;01;09;04 – 00;01;28;10

Dr. Mona

You’re going to want to hear this. And hey, if this little gem gave you something to think about, send it to a friend. Share to your stories and make sure you’re subscribed and download episodes. It’s those downloads that really helped the show grow. Let’s get into it.

 

00;01;28;12 – 00;01;34;22

Dr. Mona

So tell us, what are mirror neurons? Why you think they’re the the gateway of parenting and breakthroughs?

 

00;01;34;24 – 00;01;52;22

Chris Lake

So it’s incredibly interesting. In my line of work, we have to do a lot of imitation to get children with autism toddlers to actually learn different skills. And it turns out humans are very social creatures. And we do an incredible amount of observation learning, which is why almost virtually any job anyone’s had, they had to do a follow up.

 

00;01;52;22 – 00;02;08;27

Chris Lake

They had to observe someone first and see, oh, that’s how I do this. That’s how I do this. That’s how I do this. So to backtrack, in 1992, there was a research team led by Doctor Pellegrino, and they were trying to see the relationship between hand mouth activity in the brains of Mack monkeys. And use is very similar.

 

00;02;08;27 – 00;02;36;00

Chris Lake

It showed needles. They put them into their brains and study their, premotor cortex. And it studied every time it fired when it reached for a nut native reach for not eating. And then one day, one of the grad students walked into the room and had lunch, and they were eating nuts of their own. The Mack monkey that they were studying was just watching this grad student, and when it simply watched the grad student eat a peanut, the same exact part of his brain lit up as if the monkey itself had reached and eaten the nut.

 

00;02;36;00 – 00;02;56;03

Chris Lake

And they said, wait a second, what just happened? Why did his brain light up like that? He’s not moving. He’s just watching someone do something that makes no sense. So first he thought the machine was off. I thought she thought the tech was broken. And after that, after they went through that, there was no. It turns out that the same part of our brains fire, whether we’re doing something or we witnessed someone doing something.

 

00;02;56;06 – 00;03;14;07

Chris Lake

And that made people start doing a whole rabbit hole of research and using electroencephalography to study the premotor and motor regions of the frontal cortex, as well as the parietal lobes where they saw it’s lighting up. What’s happening? Okay, so the mirror neurons aren’t like specialized cells. It’s just how the cells fire in certain areas of the brain.

 

00;03;14;13 – 00;03;33;18

Chris Lake

And the particular areas of brain that light up are the ones that control movement as well as touch spatial navigation, language processing, interpreting sounds, using language, and also, in some cases, object recognition. And they found that the more they witnessed someone do something, the more the brain lit up, especially if the thing someone was doing was familiar to them.

 

00;03;33;18 – 00;03;50;07

Chris Lake

So like if a piano player witnesses another piano player play more of the brain lights up than someone who does know how to play the piano. At the same time, someone who doesn’t know how to play the piano. The part of the brain that’s dictating the fingers moving is still lighting up, watching someone play the piano. The same thing is true for sports.

 

00;03;50;07 – 00;04;12;28

Chris Lake

If you played a sport as a kid and you watched someone play sports on TV, parts of your brain that are dictated by your legs, knees, arms, hips moving are lighting up despite the fact you’re sitting down and it creates this understanding that we are learning from observation, in a way that we’re almost pre coding and pre mapping how our body is supposed to function in order to make things happen.

 

00;04;13;01 – 00;04;31;08

Chris Lake

There was a 2009 study done where they had people watch a dance video being modeled versus giving them symbolic instructions on how to do the dance, and they found that parts of their brain really lit up the superior temporal cortex, really lit up when they watched a human dance, and then when they had them actually try to do the dance afterwards.

 

00;04;31;08 – 00;04;53;16

Chris Lake

Everyone who saw a human did it did much better versus in getting simple instructions. And we had, in 2010, UCLA professor Jack Boney, he had a hypothesis that there’s going to be a connection between the emotional system as well as the motor system. So now he want to play with this in the limbic system. And when he does this, he put them in fMRI with goggles on to see pictures of people at different emotional expressions.

 

00;04;53;18 – 00;05;10;01

Chris Lake

And he had the, he had the participant basically first match the expression on the face of each emotion. So the person smiling, the smile of their grimacing, the grimacing, and he studied what parts of the brain light up when they make these expressions in their face. And then he said, okay, now look at these expressions again. But keep still.

 

00;05;10;04 – 00;05;35;08

Chris Lake

Do not move. Same exact parts of the brain still lit up. And this this creates part of a hypothesis memory stress hypothesis. Because it is all correlational, that this is where empathy comes from. In witnessing people have certain emotions. We are we are experiencing those emotions, which is part of why when we watch a movie, we can cry as part of, you know, if it’s sad enough or joyful enough or, or if it’s Pixar, anything.

 

00;05;35;11 – 00;05;36;23

Chris Lake

 

00;05;36;25 – 00;05;38;18

Dr. Mona

You mad? They’re good.

 

00;05;38;23 – 00;05;40;23

Chris Lake

Yeah, they’re so good. I don’t know why.

 

00;05;40;23 – 00;05;53;28

Dr. Mona

They’re so good. Yeah, I am a water. We’re kind of gal. But those movies, man, I’m like a he like, I’m, ugly crying, if you will, all the time. Which is like my mirror. My mirror neurons are being triggered very significantly, for sure.

 

00;05;54;01 – 00;06;11;29

Chris Lake

Yeah. So. But, we are we are constantly learning from each other. We are constantly also experiencing what other people see around us or experiencing, and this is for me as a, as a special educator, makes me consider how we interact with our children as parents, how we interact with children’s providers, because it’s that monkey see, monkey do neutrality.

 

00;06;12;00 – 00;06;30;14

Chris Lake

If your child sees you cooking in the kitchen, they might. And you and they have a kitchen that they’re going to imitate stirring in a bowl, they’re going to imitate washing dishes, they’re going to imitate certain things without you instructing them on how to do it. You don’t teach your kid how to play house. A kid just sees mom and dad housing and decides, today I’m going to imitate mom and Dad.

 

00;06;30;16 – 00;06;54;26

Chris Lake

If they see Mom and dad use tools, they’re going to imitate using tools. If they see their siblings kicking a ball or playing in some sort of way, they imitate it. They don’t need to walk through it specifically. Now this is where I’m going to lose some of your audience. Maybe, the issue is when a child is given a bit more screen time to observe human behavior or behavior than human time, right?

 

00;06;54;29 – 00;07;15;16

Chris Lake

Now do the mirror neurons still fire? If you are watching a human do something on a screen? Yes they do. However the fire about half as much. Okay. Yeah. That means the brain is getting half as much access to information and half as much, opportunity to consider. How do I met my body? As I said, parts of the brain that try to lobes, temporal lobes.

 

00;07;15;16 – 00;07;42;22

Chris Lake

These are language processing areas. And a lot of how kids learn how to talk is through something called mouth gazing. When they transition from purely babbling to trying new sounds, babbling, and you hear it when you have a, you know, an infant toddler transition, like, wait a second, that’s a new sound. What’s going, oh, that’s a new sound to they’re experimenting with sounds, but moreover, because they’re watching you talk, the more you talk to your child, the more you put your kid on your knees, your lap and just talk about anything.

 

00;07;42;22 – 00;07;51;06

Chris Lake

It doesn’t matter. Talk about your day. Talk about washing their hair. Talk about a book you read. Talk about celebrity drama. It really doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.

 

00;07;51;08 – 00;07;51;29

Dr. Mona

It doesn’t.

 

00;07;52;02 – 00;08;10;11

Chris Lake

Doesn’t matter. Whatever you talk about, they’re getting information about how your jaw, how your lips, how your tongue, how your teeth, how your uvula in the back of your throat, how your neck, everything, how they all are doing something. And speech is so incredibly complex that we take it for granted because we do it everyday, all day long.

 

00;08;10;13 – 00;08;28;25

Chris Lake

But there’s only 12 cranial neurons that go from cranial nerves, excuse me, that go from our brain all the way down to the rest of our body that dictate what we’re doing. And fully half of those are necessary for speech. Right. So including the diaphragm, including the larynx, parts of your body that you’re not even seeing, the kid has to figure out how do I breath control, breathe.

 

00;08;28;25 – 00;08;47;16

Chris Lake

How do I make a fricative sound. How do I okay, this part has to vibrate. I don’t know how to do that. So when they mouth gaze, they’re getting that information of how the mouth moves and it’s going to light up those mirror neurons. This is not very present in screens we don’t typically see into the mouths of actors and actresses.

 

00;08;47;18 – 00;09;07;04

Chris Lake

We can see their teeth. We don’t see their top right. We’re not looking into the mouth. It’s usually pretty decent, with the exception of, say, I have to give this person of roses, Miss Rachel. She is fantastic at actually bringing a screen right up to her face when she wants to share sounds. And that’s that’s a good a speech therapist technique that I wasn’t there.

 

00;09;07;04 – 00;09;10;05

Chris Lake

So I was like, wow, you are such quality program.

 

00;09;10;05 – 00;09;13;26

Dr. Mona

And yeah, yeah, she’s great. I do like her too.

 

00;09;14;03 – 00;09;29;22

Chris Lake

Oh man. Such quality. But that makes a huge difference. And you know, as someone who’s working with kids who are going from non-verbal to verbal whenever I start seeing kid mouth is in my head, I’m like, oh, you’ve crossed over. You start in tangent to that. Cool. It’ll just be a few weeks or days that you might start making new sounds.

 

00;09;29;22 – 00;09;50;11

Chris Lake

And once, once that chain reaction happens, speech will progress. But they have done studies. It was a speech in Japan where they took 84,000 toddlers, who watched 3.5 hours of TV or more and or 3.5 hours of screen time or more, and they found there was a speech delay, and people get upset when they hear that. But, as we talked about in the last episode, you know, what’s the proof?

 

00;09;50;11 – 00;10;11;01

Chris Lake

There’s proof that if a child has too much screen time, they’re not going to be on the same path, typically towards speech and communication. Are there exceptions? Of course there are exceptions, exceptions to everything, but they are not getting access to information as if instead of three hours they had two hours an hour and a half. We spent you just talking to them or even a half an hour is you just talking with them.

 

00;10;11;03 – 00;10;29;24

Chris Lake

So it’s imperative, parents, to take the opportunity to to utilize this knowledge about mirror neurons and say, okay, how much stuff can I demonstrate for my kid so that they can start to try to do new things? My wife had a wild idea when our newborn was not even crawling yet. Right? This is this is tummy time period.

 

00;10;29;26 – 00;10;39;09

Chris Lake

And she said, well, maybe how is she supposed to crawl? Right? She asked me the question, why is it we expect kids just will know how to crawl, how she’s supposed to crawl? She’s never seen anyone ever.

 

00;10;39;09 – 00;10;40;19

Dr. Mona

Yeah, absolutely.

 

00;10;40;21 – 00;10;58;03

Chris Lake

And I thought I said, you know, that’s a really good question. And especially because my child is a pandemic baby, so we’re around no other children or the people. When my kid was four months old, three months old. And so we we took an afternoon to take turns crawling so my baby could see us actually crawling on the floor.

 

00;10;58;03 – 00;11;18;14

Chris Lake

And the next day she started crawling. I mean, yeah, there’s something to demonstration and allowing a child have observation to learn. And, you know, observation and attendance are the foundations of learning. And trial and compliance are next. So parents take advantage. Demonstrate everything and anything you can give your child access to seeing you do limit screen time.

 

00;11;18;14 – 00;11;42;25

Chris Lake

I’m not saying no screen time. You know, you don’t have to be that wild. But you know, the more you are engaging with your kid, the greater the advantages your kid has to learn to try and to get feedback. And just to give another example, if a child is watching on their iPad, kids play at a gym or play at a jungle gym, for example, in the park, and they’re sitting on a couch and they’re watching kids, you know, a jungle gym will then mirror neurons fire.

 

00;11;42;25 – 00;12;04;00

Chris Lake

We’ve already established, yes, they will see kids on the monkey bars, or see kids go down a slide and parts of the bike, the arms or legs, parts of the device internally will light up in their brain. However, that’s where it starts and stops. Comparatively, when you take a child to the park and they see the very same activities, that part of the brain is lighting up stronger, okay, for one.

 

00;12;04;00 – 00;12;21;18

Chris Lake

But then the immediate access to try and as a result, they’re going to learn what works and what doesn’t. Their proprioceptive system is going to be more lit up. Their knowledge of how this works by that trial, by our playing will be lit up and they’re going to learn faster. So, you know, the human human experience cannot be stressed enough.

 

00;12;21;18 – 00;12;34;01

Chris Lake

Take advantage. Bring your kids out, play play dates. You know, get them just in analog environments as much as possible because they will learn from that more efficiently, more efficiently than pure screen time.

 

00;12;34;03 – 00;12;53;06

Dr. Mona

And I love that you’re also pandemic parent because, you know, sometimes parents can feel like, you know, that their children in the pandemic didn’t have their that exposure to others modeling. But remember, as a parent, you did it perfectly. You guys took an afternoon to model crawling. So don’t you know if you’re listening to this, you’re like, oh, but you know, in the pandemic, I didn’t get to do that.

 

00;12;53;06 – 00;13;11;07

Dr. Mona

And this don’t worry about it. It’s it’s you as a parent are modeling and they’re looking at their primary caregiver. You know, you talked about like modeling so early I agree I think modeling is one of the biggest things because of the mirror neuron concept. And I still remember when my son was an infant and I’d be talking to him very exaggerated movements.

 

00;13;11;07 – 00;13;32;08

Dr. Mona

And yes, that and the way he would tilt his head like almost like almost like a puppy, right? Yes. You’re talking to us and you know that they’re absorbing it. So you tilt the head and you’re talking and it’s like, almost like. Oh, and then his eyes, his eyebrows would furrow. You can see it, especially the infancy period that even though they’re not talking back to you like, hey, mom, I agree with what you’re saying, right?

 

00;13;32;09 – 00;13;50;18

Dr. Mona

Oh, those pre verbal communication skills are building and it’s a beautiful thing. And I love all the things that you mentioned about mirror neurons and understanding that. And so you already briefly alluded to this. But how can a parent use mirror neurons to their benefit in parenting and child development? You know, but is there anything else that you want to add about that?

 

00;13;50;19 – 00;14;10;10

Chris Lake

Yes. Play skills in particular. Now please. Our kids learn and they do a lot of trial, but they’re also going to build manual dexterity skills, which is very important because so much of what we actually do in our day to day life is hand based. So yeah, one thing that I’ve witnessed parents do, and I’ve heard parents come to me over the years is they’ll say, I got my kid this toy and they want nothing to do with it.

 

00;14;10;12 – 00;14;27;02

Chris Lake

And, you know, I ask, well, did you show them how to use it? And they look dumbfounded. So if you buy a child a toy, if it’s the first time getting a puzzle, if it’s the first time getting a kitchenette, if it’s the first time seeing crayons, whatever it may be, it’s beneficial to demonstrate how to use this.

 

00;14;27;02 – 00;14;57;15

Chris Lake

Oh, this is how I play with this and aim to play with there for like a minute or two, as opposed to like four seconds. Pretend to get into it, make it look like you’re having fun, and that’s going to make them more enticed to try it as well. So the more you demonstrate, the more they’re going to have that information, access to that map, that neural map of what parts of my body is, how my fingers can rotate, how my wrist needs to move to put that puzzle piece, and whatever it may be that will give them that access to successfully trying and engaging in these tools.

 

00;14;57;15 – 00;15;17;06

Chris Lake

And the more they successfully try and engage in these tools, you’re building kids confidence. Anthony Robbins says happiness is progress, and I agree with that. I also say that it’s in part mastery the more you give a kid opportunities to establish. I mastered that shape sorter, have mastered that puzzle, I mastered that. They’re going to have that confidence to try new things and feel confident and comfortable trying new things.

 

00;15;17;13 – 00;15;34;17

Chris Lake

And that’s going to open a lot more doorways. And it’s just, nah, I’m good. Just give me the iPad. I’m great. I don’t I don’t want to do that. I’m fine with that. So demonstrate how to play. Demonstrate how to share, you know, with your partner or with your adult support network, you know, if you want your kid sharing, but they’re not seeing you share.

 

00;15;34;19 – 00;15;51;15

Chris Lake

They are missing a certain map. So sometimes you got to ham it up, like you said, when you exaggerate speech and said, hi, sweetheart, how I play, you know what I mean? It feels silly, feels a little ridiculous. And I tell parents, you don’t have to do it forever, but it is helpful. And, you know, let’s get into how you have to do it.

 

00;15;51;18 – 00;15;53;03

Chris Lake

But there are benefits to doing.

 

00;15;53;03 – 00;15;54;10

Dr. Mona

Yes, there are.

 

00;15;54;12 – 00;16;11;10

Chris Lake

Benefits to doing it. So that that would be the big takeaway, you know, show them how pretend play with your partner or play with whatever adult support network you have, or play with the older siblings, whether you’re playing nurse or you’re playing dress up or you’re playing, you know, whatever game you want to play with, your kids demonstrate.

 

00;16;11;10 – 00;16;28;11

Chris Lake

And that’s going to help them have access and get it a little better as opposed to that. Here you go. Figure it out. You do it now. You feel like you can give them a chance to have that mentorship. As often as possible. You are their first mentor. You are their first teacher.

 

00;16;28;13 – 00;16;49;22

Dr. Mona

And that’s your follow up. Just a small dose of the real, relatable and eye opening conversations we love to have here. If you smiled, nodded, or had an moment, go ahead and download, follow and share this episode with a friend. Let’s grow this village together for more everyday parenting wins and real talk. Hang out with us on Instagram at the Peds Doc Talk podcast.

 

00;16;50;00 – 00;17;05;14

Dr. Mona

Want more? Dive into the full episode and more at Peds Doc talk.com. Because parenting is better with support. And remember, consistency is key. Humor is medicine and follow ups are everything. I’m Doctor Mona, see you next time for your next dose.