In which of meads three stages do children imitate the people around them

During Preparatory Stage (about age 2 or less), children imitate the people around them.

The other 2 stages are Play Stage:children role play specific people and

Game Stage : children learn their role in relation to others and how to take on the role of everyone else in a game.

George Herbert Mead was a philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, as well as one of the founders of Symbolic Interactionism. He wrote about the nature and development of self.

To Mead, the state in which children imitate people around them, is the Preparatory Stage (from the moment of birth to about age 2 or 3).