The power broker in your life is the voice that no one hears. How well you revisit the tone and content of your private voice is what determines the quality of your life.
—Dr. Jim Loehr
You’re just trying to get them to behave, to listen to you, to stop hitting their sister, to take school seriously, to do whatever. So you speak firmly, even harshly. You’re tired, you’ve had this conversation a thousand times, you’re not as kind as you could be. Maybe you try to make a joke out of it, to soften the delivery of your honest opinion about what they’re doing —except the joke hits a soft spot and cuts too close to the bone.
You know what you’re doing, really, in these moments? You’re cementing a very specific voice in their head.
Everything we say, every interaction we have with our kids, is shaping them. How we speak to them informs how they will speak to themselves. If you want proof of this, think about all the complexes and scripts you picked up from your parents—maybe things you’re working on in therapy right now, decades later.
So while you can, before it’s too late . . . catch yourself. Think about how you can be an ancestor instead of a ghost. Make this interaction a kind one, a patient one, a friendly one. Speak to them the way you’d want them to speak to themselves. Because it’s not a matter of if they will internalize the things they heard growing up; it’s a matter of what they will internalize. Put a good voice in their head so they might remember the good stuff.