An Environment of Encouragement
Last Saturday Ray and I had a bittersweet experience at the estate sale of my precious Aunt Nan and Uncle Jerry. My aunt went home to be with Jesus a year and a half ago. For that we greatly rejoice. My Uncle Jerry isn’t able to handle the responsibilities of his home anymore.
My cousin Tina was right. The time was right for an estate sale. Still, as I stood in their bedroom and shuffled through the unsold sweatshirt cardigans my aunt designed and decorated so beautifully, looking for ones I thought my mother might enjoy wearing, I stopped and had a good cry.
As Ray and I loaded up our car with some special memories, I heard a story from one of Tina’s friends. I’ll call the friend Paula. Somehow regional accents came up in conversation. Paula told of an experience she had when she left East Tennessee as a child and moved to California. Naturally she took her southern accent with her.
When Paula was a high school student, a teacher gave her class a writing assignment. The teacher required the students to read their assignments aloud and she recorded them. When the teacher played Paula’s recording, she told the class that it was an example of how not to speak.
Humiliated, Paula left the high school and enrolled in night school. She, too, became a teacher, but she never shamed a student for having a southern accent or for anything else.
Praise God that your children live in an environment of encouragement and not of shame and that you are giving your children the opportunity to develop their talents, whatever those talents are.
Therefore encourage one another
and build up one another,
just as you also are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Thank you for this reminder! I tend toward the negative, and I know it’s important to encourage my children in their interests rather than criticize them. How sad that a teacher would shame a student in front of the class like that.
Thank you for this! When I was a child, my family moved to another region and I also was shamed for my southern accent by a teacher. This is a beautiful post and a beautiful reminder of the importance of encouragement especially with our little ones!