Sticks and Stones

The well-known childhood mantra -- Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me -- is well-meaning, something I have even taught to Connor, but lacking in truth. The reality is that words may often hurt a lot more than any physical injury. This may be why some people say that boys, being more rough and tumble, are often not as cruel as girls, who in the words of a patient of mine, can be downright "wicked" with their words when they want to be.

Having seen the movie Walk the Line this week (a Redbox gem), I have been thinking a lot about the lifelong damage that parents can inadvertently make with callous remarks to their children. In the movie, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) is haunted his whole life, and driven to drug abuse, by the belief that he had contributed to his beloved big brother's accidental death. He had left his brother behind at a wood-splitting job when the deadly accident occurred. Into adulthood, he hung onto the accusing words of his father after the accident, "Where have you been?" ... "The Lord took the wrong son!"

I remember vividly remarks in my childhood that must have stuck because they were so hurtful. I was probably less than 10 years old, playing with my mother's lint brush, the kind that scrapes off lint in one direction and is cleaned of lint in the other direction. I thought I was being clever when inspiration hit me to grab one of my velvet tops and one of my mother's and use her lint brush to clean lint off my top while simultaneously transfering the lint onto my mother's top. When my mother walked in the room, I said very proudly, "Mommy, look what I did!". I must have caught her at a particularly bad time, because as she gazed upon her lint-covered top, she said, "You are such a selfish girl!" and stormed out of the room. I stood there perplexed, not even knowing what the word meant, and still remember my poor father coming in to comfort me and try to explain away what she said.

I know Connor, at least, is a sensitive sort, and I wonder how Bob and I can avoid such verbal blows, perhaps we cannot. Once Connor stopped going to his favorite Karate class for a whole month, simply because one of the boys said to him during an exercise that his pose made him "look like a Barbie doll". Connor is like an elephant and doesn't forgive and forget easily. And though Benjamin may be preverbal, he clearly knows what we are saying. So we must beware. Sometimes, even compliments can be misinterpreted. Saying that one child is smart while another is athletic may hurt the one child who is not as academic, or the other who is athletically-challenged. How sensitive our little hearts can be. God help us hold our tongues!