Sometimes my children do silly things. Sometimes they do naughty things. Sometimes they do things that leave me staring at them with my mouth open in a mix of disbelief and shock and terror all at the same time.
Like when I walked into the kitchen today and my two year old had dumped a huge cup of milk on the kitchen floor and was joyfully jumping in it like it was a puddle on a rainy day.
Or like things my older children do that I will refrain from sharing out of respect for their privacy. Trust me, the shocking behavior doesn’t wear off once the pull ups come off.
I called my husband today a bit flustered. I told him that the phrase “It’s like herding cats” didn’t apply today. “Today, ” I said, “it’s like herding cats on speed.”
I closed the last minivan door, closed my eyes, took a moment and just wondered “in what universe is this normal?”
Luckily I was in a pretty good mood and things went smoothly.
But I’m not always in a good mood, and things don’t always go smoothly.
During those times, I’ll find myself venting to my husband or my friends. I’ll try to respect my kids’ privacy, but at the same time I’ll express all of my frustrations and trials. I think that’s what we moms do when we see each other. We know all the great things about our kids. We show those to the world on Facebook. But when we get together, it’s usually the rough stuff we talk about. The attitudes and the struggles and the kids who just won’t do what we want them to no matter how hard we try.
And that’s all good. We need a place to vent.
But sometimes I wonder if we are doing ourselves a disservice when we spend too much time lamenting and commiserating and not enough time bragging and sharing the good stuff.
Let’s face it, our culture isn’t so great at showing respect these days. Even the most polite of conversations about the most banal of topics online can turn into a cage match. People spend half their time whispering behind cupped hands. Every person who was ever a tween girl knows that when the table stops talking when you arrive that your faults or mistakes or embarrassments were the conversational main course.
And we surely can’t look for celebrities or even the people in the highest reaches of our society, the ones who we should be able to look up to, for examples on how to talk with respect or how to treat people with respect.
Most of us are overflowing with righteous indignation.
And so I wonder what the effect is when we spend too much time deliberating over our children’s weaknesses. How does it change the way we see them? Does it help us see them as little beings worthy of the greatest of love and respect? Or does it make us hyperaware of every mistake they make?
I look out into the world my kids are going to grow up in, and it makes me cringe. I don’t want to send them out there. I don’t want to send them into a big old land where people will take the fullness of who they are and reduce them to a judgment based on a single characteristic or trait. I don’t want to send them into a world where they hear their leaders berating and insulting each other to the point where it would have to make them think that that is how people speak to one another. I don’t want to send them into a world inhabited by the faces behind the internet trolls.
But I have to.
And so I think it matters all the more what they hear inside of our home, and I think the voices and the attitudes that we have matter now more than ever.
When our children hear us, do they hear affirmation or words of discouragement?
Do they see their strengths praised more than they hear their flaws corrected?
Do they hear those flaws presented as mere characteristics of who they are as the very definition of who they are?
Do they see people who will give them their full time and their full attention whenever it is in any way possible, or do they get half an ear and a sideways glance?
Do they feel loved even when they mess up? Do they get yelled at for their mistakes, or do they get corrected by people who very much remember what it is like to screw things up?
I started out talking about how we talk about our children. I think this matters. I think how we talk about them will influence how we talk to them. How we talk about them will affect how we think about them, and how we think about them will be manifest in how we treat them.
But don’t get me wrong, this parenting gig is hard, and we all need people to commiserate with. My closest friends will still get to hear the parts of my weeks that drive me up a wall. Moms are people too and we need sounding boards.
That’s great.
But I’m going to make sure it’s also not all that I say.
Our words shape our reality. When people hear our words, do they hear the love we have for our children? Do they hear the respect and the admiration?
Every single day our kids have to face this world. It won’t always be kind to them. But if we spend our time with them in our homes respecting them, at least I hope that they will begin to see what it looks like, and they will know that they have a comforting place to come home to.
But it’s a tall order. Especially when the cats have found the speed.