Children // Words // Part 1

Our baby isn't a baby anymore (He's even getting his own baby brother soon. Which he definitely thinks is growing in the tummy, too). His vocabulary is growing every day. Every day he is learning. He is absorbing more information. As we begin to see just bits and pieces of this regurgitated, we see just how much he notices. Children are sponges everything they experience is stored and sorted. The more often they hear something the more likely they are to absorb the information. There are certain core values that I want to instill in my children through the way I treat them, others, and myself. My husband and I have thoroughly discussed what words and phrases we want for our children to hear frequently and fervently. We came up with 5 key words. 

1. God 

As in "Thank God" or "God is good". We want to make God number one, not only in our lives, but in the lives of our children. God is present, personal, and persistent in our lives. He works actively, daily in our lives if we let Him. The verbal acknowledgement of the Lord's presence in our lives is to show our children that God is not just a being we talk to at meals. God is not just someone whose home we visit once a week and only acknowledge in those moments. We want our children to engage with he Savior actively from a young age. God is not an abstract concept or a distant creator who made us and walked away. I want our children to know, feel, and experience this. 

Being a Christian is a huge portion of our identities and we pray that one day, our children will choose that path as well. Our faith should be obvious to everyone whose lives we touch, especially our children. Our children, as they imitate us should be getting their first taste of imitating Christ as that is who we are striving to imitate. Our lives should point to God in our actions and words. So we choose to purposefully make God a well-used word in our home. 

2. Love

Primarily, we want our children to know that God loves them and that we love them. We want this to be a core principle, a truth that washes over every aspect of their life and colors the way they see the world. We want them to feel safe and secure in that fact. More so in the fact that God loves them than that we do because one day we will dissappoint them. One day, we will fail them and they will question or love, but God's love never fails. We want our love to be not a pervasive part of their identity, but something that they never have to wonder about. 

Secondarily, we do not want our children to be afraid of this word when used in other applications. Greek has many words for love: philia, agape, eros, and storge (to name a few). Most languages have multiple words to describe what we group together and just call love. While we all inherently know that the love we have for our favorite toy is a different love than the one we have for our mothers which is also different from the love we have for our significant others (Oedipus aside), we still use the same word to describe it. My husband and I do not want our children to run scared from a beautiful word because of society's projection on it. We want beautiful friendships to be accompanied by a beautiful word. Whether it is the unconditional love they feel for their children or the love they feel for the best friend in high school, we do not want them to shy away from this word. 

3. No

It is our tendency to give our children what they want because we want to make them happy, but their happiness is not our number one priority. We want them to God-loving, healthy, and independent. We want them to be safe and secure. We want them to know how to take rejection. We want them to be flexible. We want them to see "no" as an opportunity to go in a different direction or see a different way of doing things. No is our response to the sense of entitlement that riddles a generation. No is our response to inappropriate behavior. No is a way to mold them into a God-fearing adults full of respect and love for the world around them.

4. I don't know

This is a phrase I have so much trouble uttering. I want our children to have no shame in a phrase that opens doors. "I don't know" is the key to learning. I want them to hear this phrase because I want their love of learning to be lifelong. I want them to learn new things right along side me. I want to be able to admit my imperfections. I want to inspire their curiosity.  We pray for them and their minds. We pray that they ask the right questions and are able to fully understand concepts because they know how to ask questions and admit when they do not know something. We want them to feel welcome to not know something and understand that not knowing is in no way a failure on their part.

5. I'm sorry

Similar to "I don't know", "I'm sorry" is a phrase that is used far too sparce in our society. Apologies are signs of humility, admissions of wrong doing, and acts of empathy. They cause our children to think about someone else as more important as them and put their feelings before their own. It causes them to think about the results of our actions and the impact we have on others. I do not want to raise unapologetic children. I would rather have children apologize for things that the other person was not in the leaast bit offended for than raise children who callously put their wants and needs above those of others.


My husband and I pray daily for our children. We pray that they grow up to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. More importantly, we pray that they grow up with a strong moral compass and a passion to follow God. We pray that our children learn to walk in the way of the Lord. We pray that they never stop learning. We pray that we can teach them justice, grace, and love. We pray that they never need and only want in life. We pray that they know the same Truths that we do: they are loved, they are provided for, they are safe.