Maybe what we are saying is not what they are hearing.
Ray and I have been putting in many curriculum development hours for the last few days, so I hope you don’t mind that I am republishing a previous (slightly edited) post this morning. It has a new picture that I hope you will enjoy. The message is an important one. Communication! Whew! Does that ever get all mixed up around your house?
Well, here it is . . .
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When our younger daughter was around four years old, people made lots of comments about how tall she was. Since I’m short, I would often reply with, “One of these days I’m going to be the shortest one in the bunch.” After hearing this over and over, one day she said to me: “Mom, when you get little . . .” Little did I know that she thought my “shortest one” comment meant that I was shrinking!
I have been the shortest one in the bunch for a long time now—probably since she was about 12 years old. My grandma name of “Little” really fits.
Our younger daughter wasn’t the only one who mixed up grown up talk sometimes. One day in the summertime, our older daughter got dressed up in winter clothes. Ray said, “Go put on something cool.” In a few minutes, she came back in sunglasses and beads. She was the child who always kept us in stitches — she still is!
When our son John was four years old and Bethany was two, I was expecting Mary Evelyn. I was careful about lifting and evidently John had been listening to things I said about that. The children and I went to Tennessee for several days while Ray stayed at home to work. One day Bethany woke up from her nap and John came to me worried. He said, “Bethany is crying, Grandmother is sewing, you have a baby in your tummy, and I’m four years old!”
He didn’t know how in the world we were going to get Bethany out of the crib under those seemingly impossible circumstances!
Perspective. In each of these incidents, parents communicated and children responded with their childlike perspective. When we struggle with children in their learning, behavior, or attitudes, maybe it’s time to think about our perspectives and their perspectives. Maybe what we are saying is not what they are hearing.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child,
think like a child, reason like a child.
1 Corinthians 13:11