Be an example

I’ll never forget when my oldest of three boys was two years old. I stopped at a red light and out of his mouth came the words, “Come on people!” My eyes popped out of my head. And I slowly turned around from the driver’s seat and looked at him, wondering where he had heard those words.

As if I didn’t know. The words came out of my mouth a couple weeks earlier. I was in a hurry one day (Since I’ve been a mother, I don’t ever seem to be on time anymore), and the car in front of me didn’t move at the very second the light turned green. And what did I shout at the car in front of me that day? “Come on people!”

I had no idea that my child, who was so young at the time, would have not only heard me say such a thing, but he obviously had also observed when and where to say those words because he had said them at a stoplight, the very place I had said them two weeks earlier.

Oh no, I thought. What had I done?

I decided it was time that my husband and I not only watched what we did in front of our child but that we were also more careful about what we said around our child (and later, our three children).

We all know that children adore their parents. Daughters want to look like their mothers and sons want to look like their fathers. They want to talk like us. And they want to act like us.

The startling truth is that they want to do everything we do. And they WILL emulate EVERYTHING we do at some point when they are children and will continue to become more and more like us as they become adults.

Recently, I wrote an article on bullying for Good News Florida and interviewed Jowharah Sanders, the Executive Director and Founder of National Voices for Equality Education and Enlightenment (NVEEE), an organization working toward prevention of bullying, violence, and suicide among youth, families and communities through direct service, mentoring and prevention education.

And the most startling fact I learned from Ms. Sanders was that one reason children become bullies is because their parents are bullies.

She goes on to say that children watch the way their parents treat others, whether it’s the way they treat peers or the way they yell at referees at a football game.

And bullying doesn’t just mean physically hurting someone or yelling at someone. There are other ways to be a bully as a parent.

A parent might bully by using social networks or media to gossip about other people or to put them down. A parent might speak in an unkind way to another person when annoyed or frustrated. A parent can even bully when he or she thinks they are simply just teasing another person.
 

We don’t often think that our children will mimic our behaviors or words, especially when they are so young. But no matter how old they are, they are listening to every word we say. And they are watching everything we do…even when we don’t think they are listening or watching.

If we are working so hard to teach our children to be more like Christ, by being kind and loving to one another, then isn't it time that we start paying more attention to the lives that we are leading?

Remember that little ears are always listening and little eyes are always watching.

*Please check out my article on bullying, entitled, “The Davids and Goliaths,” in the August issue of Good News Florida. Read it at GoodNewsFl.org.

*You can also read my recent article in the September issue of Good News, entitled, "I'm Gonna Let it Shine," which includes an interview with world-renowned cardiologist, Dr. Chauncey Crandall and 1996 Heisman Trophy winner, Executive Director of Desire Street Ministries and recent Hall of Fame inductee, Danny Wuerffel.