like a sword

Last night I crawled onto my daughter's bed to spend a few minutes with her before I said good-night. Usually, this ends up being a 5-10 minute conversation about something that is on her heart or mind. And although I'm pretty low on parenting reserves at that point (I mean I'm typically below empty at bedtime), I'll try to listen through her emotions and pull out the words of wisdom she is seeking. (Believe it or not, she actually thinks I am wise! She has told other people this! She has told me this!! This is kind of a huge deal for me...let's see how long it lasts!)

Last night's issue was about a group of girls her age and a comment or two that was said in her direction. Not necessarily a rude comment, but said with enough undertone that my perceptive girl knew she was being made fun of. And she was hurt. She did her best to keep her composure in the situation and then blurted it out as soon as we had a moment of downtime to chat.

People, my heart BROKE. And it will always break when I hear of little girls being rude or mean to each other. It starts so young! It's no wonder we struggle with relationships as we get older. We don't trust each other because we've been torn down by other girls since we were in 4th grade! At least that's when it started for me.

So you know what I do when my daughter tells me these things? I try desperately to get her to understand her feelings in the situation and encourage her to remember those feelings when she wants to speak rudely to someone else. I cannot change other little girls, but I can try hard to teach my daughter to be considerate of the words that come out of her mouth and how they might affect someone else.

I know she still struggles. My girl speaks a lot more from her emotions than she should.
But hopefully, by the time she is a teen (lots of prayers and conversations happening now) she will have a heart for others that governs the words that come out of her mouth.

What a lesson to be learned from our little girls: let's be careful of the words we speak that we are building each other up, not tearing one another down. Because if we're being honest with ourselves (at least for me), as adults, we are just as hurt by words as we were when we were little...

KC