Speaking Life and Truth Over Our Children

When I am in with a group of parents, there is one thing which makes me exit a conversation without pleasantries. It is when someone starts speaking negativity about their children or bad mouth their children to other parents. You might be thinking right now this is hard to believe. But think back to your last conversation with a random group of moms and dads.

If you are talking with them about random things your kids do, you might find someone talking about their little “brat.” This ultimately makes me turn my head and look at the commenter.

“Why would you call Johnny a brat?”

“Because he is, he just does things on purpose to make me mad,” they will say back. And I think to myself, of course, he does, he wants your undivided attention. And when you get ignored you do the thing which gets the immediate attention grab.

Negative Attitudes About Our Kids

The problem with discussing our negative attitudes about our children is two-fold. First, I believe what we say carries weight. Even when it may not be in front of our children. When we speak words of negativity over our kids, we are speaking things which you and other people will identify with your child.

You will now see your kid as a brat, instead of a child who wants your attention. Which in turn makes you think negatively of your children more often than not. Is that any way to grow your relationship between yourself and your child?

Secondly, if you speak these words over your child, in their presence. They will identify with these remarks. And don’t tell me your child doesn’t understand or isn’t listening to your conversations. THEY ARE! Your children listen and watch everything you do.

What happens is they hear your negative talk about them and begin to adapt negativity to their personality. And then, you start to wonder how your child got so off track? Maybe, you helped change the tracks for them?

Speaking Life Over Your Children

My two-year-old is a brave, focused, and determined little girl. When she wants something or wants something a certain way, she will do everything she can to get her way. Sometimes she will physically force her way with her sister or even try with my wife and me. She has an inner strength which some would call “strong-willed.”

*I hate the phrase, “strong-willed” when used in a negative manner by the way. I want my children to have strong wills to stand up against injustice, oppression, and disrespectfulness. I think this is a terrible phrase to describe a child who acts out.*

Anyway, what I have found with my daughter is sometimes she and I need to sit down and talk about how she is feeling. Yes, she is two years old, but she does understand when her behavior is outside of the acceptable limits for our household. Our conversations start with me speaking life into her spirit and soul.

I tell her things like:

“I love your strength and charisma.” “You are clever, creative, and passionate. I love these things about you.” “You are also kind, compassionate, and thoughtful.”

Statements like these start to calm her soul and spirit right before my eyes. Acknowledging the positive traits about her seem to bring her back to a place where we can talk about the next things she needs to hear in her life.

Speaking Truth Over Our Children

Once she has calmed down and entered into a more peaceful state, this can take a few minutes or half an hour sometimes, she is able to receive the truth about life. Without speaking the life portion into her, she would not be able to receive the truth about her and our family.

This is when we have our conversation why hitting, scratching, yelling, throwing, or whatever other action occurred is not what we do in our family. We tell her what is true about our family, we are gentle, kind, and talk through what is wrong. We confirm she understands and then we proceed to move toward forgiveness if she has hurt or wronged someone.

And if she was just acting out, we confirm we love her no matter what and will always love her no matter what and ask if she is ready to go back to playing, coloring, or whatever activity she was doing at the time.

Life and Truth When Talking With Others

When I speak life and truth about my children around others, even when they are not even there, something else happens. People tend to change the way they talk about their children or even share really positive things about their kids. And when they do this without being around their children, they begin to see their kids differently.

A while back, someone in my office was bad mouthing their son. It sounded to me like he was an adventurer. He had mountains to climb and dragons to slay. But most of the time it caused havoc in their home. As I shared about my daughter and spoke words of life and truth over her being, this person started sharing about fun camping trips or hikes with their son.

A few weeks later, they shared about how their son was taking to the outdoors so much that they started hiking every weekend. And all I was hearing were positive things from my coworker.

Life and Truth are infectious. It is like water running into a bucket, after a while it spills over into other buckets.

Respond and Share

What are ways you speak life and truth over your children? Have you seen it spill out into the lives of others? Share in the responses below.