I’m at home anxiously listening to my three kids verbally chew into each other… simple conversations becoming complex multifaceted examples of modern psychological warfare, right in my kitchen! No blood spatters yet, but the wounds are deep and just as painful as if they had been inflicted with a fully automated m-16 and some grenades! Enough raw carnage to make a parent sick… where do they learn to battle and wound each other like that?
Who teaches our kids to attack first and ask questions later? I mean who models this kind of verbal warfare, who makes it seem like a good idea to rip into each other with put-downs and criticisms 24/7/365? I’m thinking somewhere at the top of my hit list should be… cynical and irresponsible teachers, modern-day TV sitcom screenwriters… hardcore religious and legalistic preachers…bitter old people? It’s clear that someone out there is messing up my kids and by God I’m going to get to the bottom of it and find me some answers… it’s seriously time to stop this nonsense!
Sound familiar?
I am loosely describing one of a hundred experiences over the past five years with my three teenagers. They learn to bite and nip and gnaw at each other like it’s their first language. Their immediate knee-jerk reaction to look for the flaws in each other, to hold grudges and keep track of failures, disappointments and broken promises. They fall into a pattern of looking for ways to painfully remind the others of past compromises and weaknesses of character…and they have no clue what they are doing.
Nope, they just mimic what they see. No real thought goes into it. They just live out what they observe. Oh SNAP! Yesirreebob, those kids are OUR KIDS. If you're finding yourself defusing more emotional bombs than Dr. Phil…it may be time to take a personal inventory of your own attitudes and habits. It may be that we parents are the ones who need to retune our hearts to move from a critical focus and a complaining spirit…to a complimentary one.
Training kids up in “The Way They Should Go” is not rocket science… it's real life. We are learning as we go. Let’s be careful to model behavior at home that encourages more than it corrects, that loves and serves more than it demands of others… it’s the way we want them to go… right?
