Thinking Out Loud, Volume CCCXXII

When our daughter, Valerie, was about three years old, we were living in the southern Louisiana town of Morgan City. One Sunday afternoon as we were just finishing our grocery shopping, we made our way to the check-out and began unloading the items from our cart onto the conveyor belt. Valerie had been riding in the child seat in the cart, but when we got to the register, we took her out and let her stand as we stood behind the cart to remove our groceries. Somehow, without us realizing it, she maneuvered herself around the cart and began running toward the front of the store. We yelled for her to stop, but she paid no heed and kept moving at full speed to the doors which automatically opened for her. Angie was in front of me, and she tried to get to her, but with the cart serving as a barrier, it slowed her down, and we watched helplessly as our child sprinted toward the parking lot. Just as she reached the sidewalk, we saw a car full of teenagers approaching at a high rate of speed, completely oblivious to the fact that a toddler was about to run out in front of them. Angie screamed so loudly that it attracted the attention of every person in the store. Miraculously, Valerie stopped just in time as the car came speeding by, missing her by mere inches. It took us all afternoon to calm back down. Although it was an incident with a happy ending, we still remember it like it was yesterday, even considering the fact that it happened quite a few years ago. As we talked about it in those first few days afterward, we came to the conclusion that the entire episode was our fault because of what we had unintentionally been teaching our daughter. You see, in the weeks and months prior, in less stressful situations, when we would instruct her to "stop" or "come here," we were much too lenient when she would ignore us the first couple times we said it. There were times when we would get in "teach mode" and explain right and wrong to her, totally unaware that we were in "teach mode" twenty-four seven, whether we intended to be or not. By allowing her to get away with disobeying our first and second commands, we were teaching her that the initial instructions didn't count...and our laxness almost cost us our daughter! That's when the realization hit us that when we used the counting method to get her to obey us, we were not being the kind of parents we needed to be. When we would say, "I'm gonna count to three, and when I do, you'd better be doing what I told you to do. One, two, two and a half...," all we were doing was telling her that one and two didn't really matter. Thankfully we saw the error of our ways in time to make the necessary changes. I'm convinced that no matter how old our kids may be, we will continue to teach them until our dying day. I've told you this before, but it bears repeating, my mom taught me how to live, and in the end, she taught me how to die. I just pray that when my time comes, I will have the courage and confidence to face death the way she taught me. The methods by which she taught my siblings and me are the same ones all of us now use to teach our own kids. The words we use to instruct our children are of utmost importance, but they aren't nearly as powerful as our actions, because "actions speak louder than words." Preston