Last posting to this blog..
| subject: | The intro to my Book |
| post date: | 2008-03-05 13:18:07 |
| views: 57 comments: 0 ratings: 0 |
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We touch our children’s lives and personalities in ways we can never truly know and understand. From the manner in which we speak to them as infants, to the way we react to them when they fall down or act up. The tone of our voice around our kids drastically influences the type of person they will be when they get older; outgoing and boisterous or quiet and mild.
They truly are like little sponges that soak up everything we say and do even when we don’t know they are watching and listening. And sometimes, the things we say and do will come back to bite us in our proverbial butts when we hear ourselves repeated (usually in very public places) by our children, in front of others.
Be careful not to speak ill of others in earshot of your children, because surely as you do it will be brought back up- by your children- in front of the person you spoke ill of. Such as little Tommy telling Aunt Betty how big mommy thinks her butt is, or how the neighbor ‘just never shuts up’.
None of us are perfect. We don’t censor ourselves 24 hours a day. Especially when our children are very little and we are so use to having them around us that we don’t think twice about discussing grown up things in front of little ears; assuming they don’t understand or won’t ever repeat it. After all, they’re just kids. Right? HA!
Sometimes it takes the innocent wisdom of children for us to see the error of our grown up ways. Children are innocent, clean little slates when they come into this world. Everything they learn, from their ABC’s to humor and sarcasm, they learn from us. They are putty and we are the sculptors. They look to us to see how we interact with people, how we react to humor, what it looks like to be sad, how we deal with anger and frustration and even the impression of how to deal with children. People who grew up with frustrated, unhappy parents will usually grow up to be frustrated, unhappy parents. See where I’m going with this?
If the only thing you ever do in your entire life is to raise healthy, well-adjusted, moderately happy, sane children; then you have accomplished a bigger task that you can imagine. It takes the right amount of balance between fun and wonderment, and discipline and guidance to bring up a well balanced kid without too many major Momma/daddy issues.
Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions. Of course there are. You can spend 18-21 years (in most cases) raising your children to be polite, smart, independent little soldiers and still have them go on a major talk show one day describing how your wicked parenting damaged their soul. We can do the best we know to do and let them steer their own path once they get older.
But in the meantime, all your errors and blunders, mis-spoken quotes and repeated quips are what make a compilation like this possible. Because kids really do say the darndest things.
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(Stepped away)
