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All of us know that children are quite impressionable. For this reason, they are in need of a certain amount of praise and appreciation from us so that they can grow into emotionally healthy adults.
When your child makes a B+ on their homework, do you find yourself asking them, "Why didn't you make an A?" While some of us may find ourselves making this mistake, I hope that we truly realize that it is a mistake. I am sure that we would much rather see an A, but we must never fail to realize what a great job the B+ truly is! We must also tell our children just how great a job that B+ is. We might even go so far as to display our child's accomplishment by hanging it upon the refrigerator just to show them how very proud we are of them.
If we take the other stance, choosing to punish or look down upon our child for not having received an A instead of a B+ this may cause the child to starting thinking poorly of themselves. This may cause feelings such as, "I am not too smart." Or the child may even begin to think, "I am just not good enough to make a higher grade." Once either of these statements enters into a child's mind, their quest for knowledge will become stale which will lead them to no longer care what grade they make in school.
This is just one small example of how our words can do either a lot of good, or a lot of damage. It is our choice how we choose to use our words. Will we choose to use our words to build our children up? Or will we use them to tear our children down?
Since we as parents truly want our children to be happy and to have a positive self-image, then we really must stop to monitor every word that comes out of our mouth when we are talking to our children. Specifically, there are five key phrases that we must never say unto our children.
First, there are those two fateful words, "Shut up!"
Maybe your parents often told you to "Shut up!" but that still does not make it right for you to tell your children to "Shut up!" Simply, it really does not matter how old the recipient of this comment is, there are so very few other phrases which are so rude and unnecessary as this one is. If you were to just stop and think for a moment, you would see that there are a lot of other things which you could say instead of telling someone to "Shut up!" For instance, would it be all that difficult to reform this statement, make it a little nicer and more of a request. You could simply tell your child to "Please be quiet" or to "Please hush." If you have already fallen into the bad habit of telling your child to "Shut up!" then rest assured that you can break yourself of this bad habit. Simply stop and think of how you feel when someone tells you to "Shut up!" I am quite certain that you really do not want your children to know this feeling, especially not when it comes from their parent.
The second phrase which is so very tempting to utter is, "Because I said so!"
Sometimes it can be quite tempting to answer the incessant chant of, "Why? Why? Why? Why?" with the simple reply, "Because I said so!" Oftentimes you may not even mean to do this, it just happens quite innocently. You may not even be thinking about what you are about to say when all of the sudden you find yourself uttering the phrase, "Because I said so!" As a child, I hated hearing these words, so I would have to wonder what would make my children want to hear it. For this reason, I try really hard to explain my decisions to my children. This often helps them to understand why I sometimes have to tell them no.
The third deathly phrase is “Just wait until your father/mother gets home!”
I have long since outgrown my childhood, but I can still remember the fear which was instilled within my mind when I was told to, “Just wait until your father/mother gets home!” I would start crying incessantly, all the while repeating, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" For this reason, it is a good idea to take some cool down time when you start to feel as though you are too angry to discipline your child. This will help you to not say or do something which you will later regret. As parents we must also remember that using the other parent as a threat is never a good idea since they may be having a hard day. Then to come home and unwittingly become the bad, evil one will only make their day worse.
The fourth phrase is one which never made any sense to me, even though I heard it quite often as a child . . . "I'll give you something to cry about!"
Take a moment to stop and think about just how crazy that really does sound. Your child is already crying because they want something that they wanted and you would not let them have. So, in your child's mind, they already have plenty to cry about, and they really do not need something else like a spanking or a time-out to make things worse for me.
Finally, there is the fifth phrase, the ultimate cream of the crop . . . "As long as you're living under my roof . . . "
Do I even need to finish this phrase? In reality what good can come of this phrase? It will only serve to help put them out of the house, and make them hate you for the rest of eternity. When your child becomes a teenager, they will begin to take you literally. So, when you tell them that "As long as you're living under my roof . . . " you really must be prepared for them to leave home right then and there.
I understand that there may be a lot of very confrontational situations which you will have with your children. Sometimes these situations may even become quite heated, nevertheless as parents it really is our responsibility to stop and consider our words before we voice them. Children are young and so their feelings and egos are very fragile. In reality, even when our children may not act like it, they really are craving acceptance from us, their parents. For this reason, we must be careful of what we say to them, and more important, how we say it.
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