We have come a bit further in recent generations about the lies we tell our children. Fairy stories in our school history books never revealed the horrid truths. They lied to us. It took me until college during my own research to even learn that the First Nations of Canada were deprived of the ability to even vote until 1960! We have so much further to go as we unravel the lies to repair and heal from our collective experiences.
Children are still being parented by adults who don’t have a clue and were never truly taught (not to mention shown) by their own parents about what to to do to raise a happy, healthy contributing member of our society. When someone goes ballistic and massacres a bunch of people nobody really wants to hear about their childhood.
During the pandemic with more parents in isolation with their children, the kids help lines are ringing off the hook.
It is a travesty that anyone thinks they are equipped to parent well and do no harm when they have not been blessed to ever have experienced a safe and healthy environment growing up.
The sins of our fathers are a heavy guilt to be handed down. The effects of wars, alcohol and drug use are some of the most obvious. We must look deep into the more subtle ways of parenting. Poor parenting can go on in a perpetual spiral and it is short of a miracle when the bad parenting cycle is broken.
Education about even our national food guides have been addressed and changed over time and yet there are no parenting skills taught in our education system! Even though not any part of a required curriculum, thankfully the subject is at least now spoken about and we’re doing better than previous generations. Or are we?
Not just parenting education but child rearing as a whole are of vital importance in the health of our society and yet it is not ever a mandatory course.
Children and young adults themselves need to know how to recognize psychological damage just as well as bodily harm and this is a deeper subject to expand upon in the higher grades.
As we learn and begin to understand the more subtle ways we do good or harm to nurture and raise our young we get to learn to look at language too.
Once you are an evolved enough person to not outright abuse your offspring you would want to avoid the unintentional damage too. The damage done in the words we speak. The subliminal messages we give and receive from other people are important to understand because those are the rumblings of the deeper messages of the soul about self-worth and community.
The words sometimes are so subliminal they are not the dirty words that parents might have told you not to say yet their impact is a mighty wallop to our beings.
What do we all need to learn about subliminal messages in the words we speak to our children, ourselves and each other? In corporate or family life the words can build or destroy.
Santa Claus might not bring you presents if you are behaving badly, we lie. That seems to be a harmless fairy tale and this lie can get children to behave better most times. Some might debate how good or bad that control tactic is. At least health professionals and parents know washing your mouth out with soap for saying a dirty word is dangerous and not acceptable parenting in this day and age.
What we really need now is not a scolding for saying dirty words or a threat of Santa not giving us presents. We must give ourselves the gift of knowledge. We get to take it deeper as we learn to nurture ourselves and our planet into the future . For an evolved society to flourish we must get a handle on the ways in which we also use the simplest and yet most complex things – our words – to affect each other’s lives.
Discover the list of words we speak that are powerful and sometimes you would never think they were dirty, but they are. The time has come to be much more careful with our language, especially with our children, and the common, everyday words we use that undermine, disempower, and sometimes hurt more than a spanking.
The Dirty Words book by Randy Lennon is recommended for all, and especially those who are, and those who aspire to be parents.
By Valerie Maltese, TQE Certified Practitioner