Today, we are continuing to talk about issues affecting women. You may want to click here to read this post in your browser, as some formatting in lost in email. Like this post? Forward to a friend!
If you can’t say anything nice…..
You know how this sentence ends, don’t you?
If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.
I don’t know how it happened, but my husband and I noticed recently that we can be really critical of people. Of course, if Gavin were reading this post, he would temper that statement with something akin not to criticism, but evaluation.
We like to evaluate, Chantel. That’s what we do. We evaluate to make things better. At least that is the story we’re telling ourselves.
Call it what you will, but when it comes right down to it, we find ourselves just not being very nice.
If it’s just he and I talking privately, that’s okay, right?
Well, no. Not exactly.
Our kids take their cues from us. How they communicate is a reflection of how we communicate.
OUCH.
Before I had kids, I didn’t really think about the example I set for other people. Once my first daughter was born, however, I became hyper-vigilant about a great many things that never bothered me before. For example, I noticed what kind of music I played, what I watched on TV, and of course what kind of toys and books I allowed in our home.
Years have passed. Decades. I’m not as careful as I used to be. I’ve been thinking about this lately with parenting. As a young mom, my front row seat (and a playroom adjacent to the family room) afforded me the opportunity and authority to dictate a lot of choices before my kids made bad ones. If they wanted to phone a friend, they had to use mine. I stood with them at the bus stop. I drove them every place they needed to go. We ate all our meals together, and I tucked them in at night.
Part of parenting is setting boundaries that help families thrive.
But part of parenting is also creating the space for kids to explore life and become their own people. So as they got older, I took my cue to “get lost” so to speak. They walked themselves to the bus stop, set up their own playdates with friends, and I no longer mediated arguments they could solve on their own.
But somewhere along the way, things went sideways. Disappointment and loneliness gave way to jealousy and anger. My adorable kids and their precious friends turned into mini mean girls.
Then, when MY friends got together we would lament that “raising girls is so much harder than raising boys,” and “oh my gosh girls are so awful to each other.”
And then I realized why.
Mean Girls, Mean Moms
That’s what my friends and I were doing to each other! No wonder we knew so many mean girls. They were the daughters of mean moms—and I’m embarrassed to say that I, too, was part of that group.
Our own Bible studies and coffee dates were filled with hours of chatter…ahem…gossip about all the people we knew. After all, we were with our friends. We didn’t feel like we needed to censor our words. We should be able to say what we really thought. Again—that’s the story we were telling ourselves. The problem, though, is that our thoughts needed auditing.
“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
I’d be crazy to think that when I got home and relayed these conversations to Gavin that my young daughters weren’t picking up not only on the tone of my voice but also the actual words I was using to describe people that I supposedly liked.
I was convicted then, and I’m convicted now.
So what should we do?
It’s actually pretty simple.
Think before you speak.
Think before you speak. And when you speak, make sure you err on the side of positivity.
I’m trying harder these days to see the best in everyone. To believe the best. To try my best to understand and empathize when I am tempted to be unkind.
There’s a rule of friendship that says that the words you use to describe other people to each other are the attributes that other people will actually ascribe to you. For example, if you are telling a new acquaintance about a friend who is generous, welcoming, and warm, that acquaintance will actually apply those adjectives to YOU, even though you’re talking about someone else.
Pretty cool, huh?
And then just this week, I read about a study that tried to figure out why some kids were popular and some weren’t. Believe it or not, the most popular kids weren’t necessarily the ones who were pretty, smart, and athletic (although obviously these traits contribute to overall popularity). The common denominator among the most popular kids, though, was that these were the kids who told the researchers that they “liked everybody.”
LIKE EVERYBODY—And love them too!
I’ve found that I like people a lot more when I spend time talking TO them rather than ABOUT them.
I hope you will, too.
If you hear me saying something unkind, consider this blog post your permission slip to call me out on it.