Your Children Hear You
As final decisions are being announced concerning whether schools will reopen for on-site education this Fall, there is a common type of joke that I am hearing from parents who are faced with the possibility of in-home learning this year.
Summarized, it sounds like this:
”I depend on the public schools to save me from having to spend too much time around my kids. Being with my kids too much forces me to day drink. I pay taxes so that I don’t have to deal with this. My kids drive me insane, somebody save me.”
Listen, I am truly aware that the absence of on-site education options places a burden on working families who will struggle to find reliable or affordable childcare, and to make time to properly support their children’s learning. This is a difficulty, for sure.
But your children hear you.
When I was a boy, my dad used to play basketball in the elementary gymnasium with his friends during the week. I liked to go with him and watch him play. I remember I was maybe 9 years old, and while the guys were taking a break from their game, I was goofing around and acting like a child. I accidentally knocked something over.
My dad said to his buddies what many would call a harmless joke. “Whose kid is this?”
I am in my thirties and I still remember it. Long after he forgot it. In my mind, my dad had disowned me in front of his friends because I had embarrassed him.
When you talk about your children like they are a burden to you, like their presence is an annoyance to you, or like the highlight of your day is when somebody takes them away from you, they hear you. It is logged away in a quiet place that will whisper to them for the rest of their lives.
I pray that we would measure the words we speak more carefully, and let the things we utter to and about our children be dripping with grace and kindness.
Matthew 18:1-10
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea….. See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”
