 |
| This illustration belongs to me. If you use it, please give me the credit. |
Everyday we have a choice. Will we build up our children or tear them down? Are we their chief cheerleader or their chief critic? Do we encourage, inspire confidence and give courage? Or do we discourage, condemn and belittle?
This is something that has been weighing on my heart lately. I'm ashamed to say that I do not encourage as much as I know I should. I may be more of a perfectionist than I would like to confess but my heart is ready for change. From now on, I will enjoy my daughter's artistic coloring approach instead of criticizing her for coloring out of the lines.
The saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" could not be farther from the truth. Hurtful words linger long after the bones have healed and when parents utter hurtful words, the effects may last a lifetime. Also, mothers (myself included) watch your tone. Your tone may hurt more than the actual words themselves.
I pray that the Lord will use my words to bless and uplift rather than hurt or discourage.
This is another great blog entry from the lovely Amy... My daughter has been doing pageants. She stopped for a while, but has recently entered a big pageant in September. As she is not even 4 yet, I try not to get upset when she is not doing her routines correctly. Today she was practicing her beauty walk and started stomping on the x's. My first thought was she looked like an angered monkey lol. Instead of getting upset with her I told her that if she didn't want to practice that was fine, but then she may not be getting a supreme title if she did not practice. I then hugged her and asked her what she would like to do. She said she wanted to do her "booty walk" (her way of saying beauty walk lol) She then went back and did it perfectly. I think it was encouraging, but f it wasn't, it was effective and we got a great result from it in the end :)
ReplyDelete