Shame, casually passed down.

Ever since I can remember, I have been very attentive to how parents speak to their children, and how it can influence their children’s lives. I’ve studied it a lot. When I was a teenager I used to even write down notes about what I would say or do to a child if I had one someday, in a notebook I carried with me every day, as I heard parents talk to their children everywhere I went.

Now that the years have passed I have developed a lot of reverence for parents, for how unimaginably complex it can be to be a child’s full time caregiver. Let alone several at a time.

And there is something I feel every parent needs to know:

Parents, (and caregivers, and even babysitters), however imperfect you think you are, you are SO perfect just by being a parent to a new expression of grace in this world.

I believe you get to become aware of how wonderfully on purpose you are, merely by existing, because you have a powerful impact on these children’s lives, and you knowing this fully can only make this world a more blissful place.

It’s so clear to me now, what happens in the casual daily word exchanges of a relationship between parent and child. I would like to express what I have understood:

I hear, especially in France, a lot of:

« tttt… see? what did I tell you?

Ugh! You shouldn’t have done that!