August 9, 2006
The other day Emily did something she does just about every time she sits down to eat. She spilled her juice. I, as always, said “Clean it up!”.
Little Emily was sitting there, her hands in the air as the cold juice soaked into her pants, and she looked at me and said, “That wasn’t the nice way to say it Mommy. You should say it like this, her voice heightened a bit, ‘Emmy, will you please clean that up?’”
We work really hard to teach our kids manners – Joe is still learning and bound to be a challenge, but Emily is an incredibly polite little girl. So you can imagine that I felt like a big jerk after this, but she was right. I didn’t speak nicely the way that I’ve taught her. I corrected myself and said, “Emmy, will you please clean that up?”
Then you know what she did? She commended ME on a job well done. “Good job, Mom, that’s the nice way to say it.”
I think we can all name a time or two when our kids have taught us a lesson, but my specific topic is the way we speak to our children. We cherish them, but does our voice reflect that? We expect them to be polite, but are we polite? It’s so easy to yell, but does the situation really call for yelling? Would Christ raise his voice at us if we made a mistake?
My daughter has been on this earth for less than five years. How long have your children dwelt here? The little ones are still learning the ropes, yet we tend to snap at them at moments when we could be teaching them.
I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s so true and so important. Maya Angelou mentioned once, and not verbatim but this is the idea, that the way you look at a child when they enter the room illustrates to him/her how you feel about them. Do you look at them with an expressionless face, or not at all? Do you look at them with the happiness you felt when they first entered your life?
Make that your goal. When your child enters the room, remember the day they were born, or they day you first held them in your arms. Adults are complicated beings laden with stress on a daily basis. We know we love them, but if we don’t express it with our words and expressions, how do they know we love them? Saying “I love you” is never enough.
Children don’t understand sarcasm, and as much as we (myself included) enjoy it and find great humor in it in certain settings, it truly has no place in a relationship with children. It may satisfy our instant need for a laugh, but it often leaves a sad little soul in it’s wake.
Children misbehave, they sass, they lie…but speak to them as if they are the best version of themselves and you’ll notice that eventually that is what they’ll strive to become. They long to please you and there is no gift that you can give your children that would equal the warm feeling of your kind, loving words of approval.
“I … beseech you … with all lowliness and meekness … to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers …
“Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” (Eph. 4:1–3, 29, 31–32.)
And my kids survived it.