It’s not just that we don’t tell our kids how proud we are of them, as we’ve been talking about here lately. It’s not just that we don’t encourage and celebrate them enough. It’s not just that they don’t see how much they impress us…
…it’s what they see and hear instead. They hear the reprimands. They hear the criticism. They see us distracted. They see us get upset. They see us leave them for hours at a time, to go do god knows what. They hear us tell them to be quiet and leave them alone. They hear us say, “How could you be so stupid?!” Is it any wonder that they don’t know how much they mean to us?
We were recently talking about the haunting grief of Monsieur de Monluc who was explaining to the 16th century French essayist Montaigne (his Essays are a must read!) what he thought the most about after losing his son. “And all that poor boy saw of me,” the bereft father recounted, “was a frowning face full of scorn; he is gone, believing I was unable to love him or to judge him as he deserved. Whom was I keeping it for, that knowledge of the special love I harbored for him in my soul! Should I not have felt all the pleasure of it, and all the bonds of gratitude? I forced myself, I tortured myself, to keep up that silly mask, thereby losing the joy of his company—and his good will as well, which must have been cold towards me: he had never received from me anything but brusqueness or knowing anything but a tyrannous facade.”
Take a minute and think what your kids are seeing and hearing from you—because you’re busy, because you’re trying to teach them something, because you’re just following the example of your own parents. Think about what they think about this, what it says to them. Think of the mixed messages. Think about how hard it is for the real message to get through.
If you want them to know you love and care about them, you’ve got to tell them over and over and over. And you have to show them over and over—it’s loving words and most of all, loving actions.
