Years ago I saw a little sign, you know the kind that looks homemade with the writing that almost looks as if it was written by a child....Anyway, it read: "Mirror mirror on the wall, I'm like my mother after all." Funny and true, even though we don't always care to admit it. I've discovered (sadly) that the flip side of that saying is: "Mirror mirror on the wall, my child's like me after all."
Don't get me wrong, neither of these quotes are necessarily bad, but I have issues which to me seem like MAJOR issues. Needless to say, I don't want my children to have the same struggles and hang ups. But, and yes there is a huge BUT, whether we like it or not, our children do what we do and NOT what we say. (most of the time anyway)
In my Positive Changes post, I mentioned about sarcasm. I have a BIG problem with sarcasm. I am very quick with my sarcastic remarks, all though I think they are funny. For example, some one might say, "we dropped him at the library." (meaning, dropped him off, off course.) But I would instantly jump in saying "Oh, I hope he's ok. Did you drop him very hard?" Ha ha, yes, but the problem is the children have now picked up on this, and they don't know when enough is enough. They do it with me, with dad, with other adults...and maybe I'm old school, but I think it's disrespectful. So, who's to blame? I tell them not to do it. I explain why they shouldn't do it. But then I do it.
Ouch! A friend said to me, "God gives us children to perfect us."
Yeah, I have 6 children, so I guess I have a lot of perfecting to do. Lol.
My point is, it is easy to TELL our children to do or not do something, but our actions contradict our words, and you now the saying "Actions speak louder than words."
So when you see something in your children that annoys you, that REALLY gets under your skin like fingernails on a chalkboard....
Take a long, hard look at yourself.
"Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." Matthew 7:5 KJV
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