Lessons That Stick
Charlie the Cockatiel came to live at our house when we gave him to Mary Evelyn for her 11th birthday. She was determined to teach him to talk. Day after day she put her finger in his cage and said, “Come here, Charlie.” She stroked him and kissed him and patiently repeated phrases.
Mary Evelyn took great care of her pet and became quite attached. Here is the portrait she drew of her beloved bird.
In the nineteen years that Charlie lived, first with our family and later with Mary Evelyn and her family, he never learned to say the phrases that she tried to teach him. He did begin to ring like the telephone — just one ringtone; we didn’t have cell phones back then. He also began to say, “Charlie”  (often “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie”), and one phrase — the phrase he heard more than any other: “Come ‘ere, Charlie!”
Our children are like Charlie. It’s what they hear all the time that sticks!
 You shall teach them to your sons,
talking of them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down and when you rise up.
Deuteronomy 11:19