CHAPTER 17
Parents Wise Enough to Use Word Pictures —Part 2
WE’VE MENTIONED several times a book we wrote together called The Blessing. It was based on my (John’s) doctoral dissertation. Over the years that we taught together, it was a “life message” I’d share at our seminars. I still teach it at my seminars and conferences today.
The book is a biblical primer in understanding how to unconditionally love and encourage children.[69] Unfortunately, we also unearthed far more than we ever wanted to know about children who grew up with critical disapproval.
When we wrote the book, we knew the failure to communicate love and acceptance was an issue in many homes. Yet, we had no idea of its magnitude. Since The Blessing was released, we’ve heard from hundreds of people who, as children, never felt loved or valued by their parents. As a result, they often left home and walked right into alcoholism, substance abuse, chronic depression, workaholism, and shattered marriage and parent/child relationships of their own. These problems are all echoes of their unhappiness from childhood.
In an attempt to run away from a family in which they didn’t feel loved, many adolescents have also dashed right into the arms of cult members and damaging sexual relationships. They have left far behind the moral, spiritual, and religious values of their parents.[70]
We know that as a concerned parent, you would never want to see any of these problems crop up in your child’s life. But then, neither did the parents of those we’ve received letters from —each of whom is now living in emotional pain.
Many parents thought they were making deposit after deposit into their child’s love bank, only to have that child leave home feeling as if he or she had a zero balance deep inside. In fact, the majority of letters we receive are not from physically abused children or kids from alcoholic homes. Often the most tragic stories are from boys and girls who grew up in families that were loving in many ways, yet their love wasn’t communicated in a manner that was understood and accepted.
How could this happen? What makes the difference between a home that sends a child out into life feeling valued, loved, and blessed, and a home that doesn’t? Often it lies in what was said by the parents —or not said.
Children desperately need to know —and to hear in ways they understand and remember —that they’re loved and valued by Mom and Dad. How can you communicate the high value and acceptance you have for your children in a special way? How can you share words that protect and provide for them? How can you better understand them, and have them understand you?
Again, we know of no better way for you to leave a legacy of love for your children than to use emotional word pictures.
Providing a Legacy of Love for Your Children
As we mentioned in previous chapters, many people fail to build intimate marriages because they lack the necessary knowledge and skills. The same thing is true with effective parenting. It, too, takes knowledge and skills —knowing what breaks relationships down and being able to build them up.
You’ve already seen how word pictures can help in the important parenting areas of discipline and positive attitude. In the pages that follow, we want to show you four additional ways in which word pictures can help a parent say “I love you” in a manner a child can’t miss. They’re reflections of the pillars that hold up an intimate marriage, which we discussed in chapters 14 and 15.
But before we launch into the various ways word pictures help parents, we must face another problem. For in many homes, it isn’t a lack of skills that’s the issue. It’s the lack of time.
“I’ve Got All the Time in the World . . .”
If a common cry for many children is, “Please say you love me,” an equally common response by parents is, “I’ve got all the time in the world to tell you.” Really? We wish that were true!
What would you do if you walked into a doctor’s office one day and were told you had Lou Gehrig’s disease? How would you react to the black-and-white words that you would be dead in 20 months or less?
If you had spent almost all your waking hours learning skills to build a career, how could you begin to switch your focus to building an intimate relationship with your wife and children? If you knew that, in a short time, all your family would have was a memory of you, how could you leave a legacy of love for them to embrace? Most of all, how could you leave your wife and children words that would warm their hearts, even when you were no longer able to pull them close and wrap them in your arms?
If you were a friend of ours, whom we’ll call Steve, you would really have to answer these questions. They’re all things he heard and thought. They’re all real-life questions he faced.
Steve had three children and a loving wife. And he was dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare and fatal disease best known for bringing down Lou Gehrig, the “iron man” of baseball.[71]
I (John) met Steve at a family camp where I was speaking. Unlike those who had come for vacation, he came with another purpose in mind. He didn’t have long to live and wanted his life —and his words —to count.
As I spoke about practical ways to build value into relationships, Steve took detailed notes. After the session, we sat down and talked about an idea he had —an idea to capture his love and prayers for his family through word pictures.
He wouldn’t always be able to look into his children’s eyes. Yet, over the years, their eyes could read and reread a series of letters he wrote —a collection of word pictures that would be waiting for them to open at important times in their lives.
He wouldn’t have the chance to be one of the proud parents seated at his children’s high school graduation, but his words would be there.
He’d miss the excitement of packing up his son’s and daughters’ cars as they would head off for their first day of college, but his message of encouragement would be there.
He’d never have the opportunity to walk his daughters down the aisle at their weddings or receive the phone call that he’d just become a grandfather, but his pictures of love and support would be there.
That’s because he wrote word pictures that will carry his prayers, wishes, and hopes for them in the future —where his voice won’t reach.
Steve’s family will always have his personal legacy of love —word pictures that are so vivid and real they seem to become flesh, complete with arms to hug and hold his wife and children. Through these words, his presence will bless and encourage his family for a lifetime.
Moms and dads, what’s your reason for not speaking the words your children need to hear so much? Are your other activities really so important that you can’t speak or write down words your children can treasure for a lifetime? We may not have a medical clock ticking behind us. But for each of us, it’s later than we think.
With the light speed at which children grow up and with the very real uncertainties of life, this is no time to withhold words of love and affection. There’s too much at stake in their future for you to put off learning the skills that can make a lasting difference in their lives.
For whatever reason, let’s all stop procrastinating and start looking at four ways emotional word pictures can carry our message of love straight to their hearts, beginning with the pillar of security.
Word Pictures and Parenting
1. Children Need Security in Words and Actions.
A few years ago, we counseled with a husband and wife who were constantly fighting. Try as we might, we couldn’t seem to help bring an end to their heated arguments.
Whenever we think we’re getting nowhere with a couple, there’s something we do that always puts things in a new perspective. That is, we ask the couple to bring their children to the next session.
Over the years, we’ve discovered that children are God’s little spies! Mom and Dad may be able to snow us and walk around issues. But when we invite the kids, in an unguarded moment they’ll walk you right up to what you most need to know.
When we sat down with this couple at our next session, we were joined by their handsome 11-year-old son and darling 6-year-old daughter. And while we didn’t realize it at the time, we were about to be given a tremendous lesson about the importance of security in a home.
“What bothers you the most about your parents’ arguing?” we asked their daughter.
She looked quickly over to her parents. When her mother nodded, the little girl said, “Every time Daddy gets mad at Mommy or us, he takes off his wedding ring and throws it away.”
Her father quickly explained that he wasn’t literally throwing away his wedding ring. He was just “venting” his anger. When something set him off, he would pull off his ring and make it ricochet off a few walls. He then explained away what he was doing as a “healthy expression” of anger. After all, he said, we were counselors and would know how damaging it was to hold anger inside.
What he didn’t realize was that his actions had become a word picture of instant insecurity to his daughter. By ripping off his ring, he created a symbol to her that was projected in Technicolor on a 40-foot screen in her mind. His action represented all the fear this little girl had that he would hurt or desert the family.
Every time this precious little one saw her daddy’s wedding ring get thrown across the room, she saw her future sail away with it. Instead of building the security she so desperately needed, her father created for her a world of constant fear. This fear, brought on by lack of security, ate at her stomach so badly that she had already been diagnosed as having childhood ulcers.[72]
For more than a year before they had come in for counseling, her father’s wedding ring was a word picture for desertion, loneliness, fear, and anxiety. That began to change only when he was confronted with the damage he was doing.
We began milking the young girl’s word picture (a skill we discussed earlier in the book)[73] by asking her father questions, such as:
“What causes you so much frustration around the house that you pull off your ring and throw it?”
“When you were growing up, did you see your father —literally or figuratively —pull off his wedding ring?”
“How close do you think your wife is to pulling off her ring?”
“How do you think it makes the kids feel when they see your ring go flying?”
“What would it take, beginning right now, to put the ring back on your finger and always keep it there?”
Through the word picture of a ring, we spoke to an entire family about the subject of security. Because we tied into a word picture in their home, our words grabbed the father’s emotions like nothing we’d said in all the previous sessions.
While not every story has a happy ending, this one did. At the conclusion of their time in counseling a few months later, this family did two things.
First, they took the time to share a word picture with their children about a wedding ring that had been scarred and dented, but now had been repaired and brightly polished. And second, they assured their children that the ring would stay on both Mom’s and Dad’s fingers, no matter what they faced in the future.
This wise couple knew they had not built a foundation of security for their children, and they willingly admitted they had caused their children physical and emotional damage. That’s what brought them into counseling. There they opened up to needed changes when their daughter pointed out a word picture to them.
Their little girl now has a very different picture in her mind of Daddy’s ring. No longer does it stand for anger, frustration, and fear. Instead, it shines with the love, courage, and resolve needed to work through problems. His words, together with his actions, repainted the faded picture of an unstable home into a masterpiece of security.
On a 1-to-10 scale, how’s the security level around your home these days? If it’s slipped into the 3s and 4s, you’re communicating a word picture of insecurity to your children.
When it comes to parenting, kids don’t bloom and grow if their roots are constantly ripped out. Insecurity in a home pulls out roots; security provides the depth and shelter for them to thrive.
If you’re a single parent, you have 10 times the reason to assure your child that you won’t leave him or her, and word pictures can help. In any separation or divorce, children get a massive dose of insecurity. To combat the damage of such feelings, you must provide a constant source of security. At encouragingwords.com, you’ll find a treasury of more than 100 word pictures to help you do that very thing.
We’ve seen how important security is, both for our children and for marriage. Now let’s look at how we can use word pictures to build character in our sons and daughters.
2. Children Need Instruction and Friendship.
It’s clear that with young children, the greatest way to bring change is through instruction that builds character. Educators have known this for years. That’s one reason that figurative language and word pictures are a key to teaching younger children.
From preschool on, children learn and remember lessons better if they’re communicated with a story or object.[74] In fact, one early sign of a learning disability for a grade school child is his or her inability to understand figures of speech.[75] It isn’t only modern-day research that supports this use of word pictures to instruct children.
Since ancient times, a parent’s goal has revolved around “training up a child in the way he should go.”[76] As the primary shapers of a child’s character, parents do well to spend time instructing young children in ways that would provide a healthy platform for later life.[77]
How do children best understand abstract concepts, such as honesty, truthfulness, discipline, and love? Whether it’s an educational concept or a spiritual truth, children (or adults) learn best when a word picture is part of the instruction time.
Parents with young children can find a ready-made application of the research studies and history we’ve already mentioned in this book. That is, word pictures are a key to building character and helping us communicate our point. In large part, that’s because emotional stories take on the qualities of real life, especially with children.
This is one reason television viewing should be so closely monitored. It’s also one reason a word picture, drawn from one of the five search fields, can be so powerful.
We know of one mother who used her microwave oven to teach her son a much-needed lesson about anger. She took a clear plastic mug, filled it with water, and set the microwave on high for three minutes. As she and her son watched the calm surface of the water being transformed into raging bubbles, she talked with him about handling his frustration.
She asked her young son what made him boil over inside at times. Then they talked about how he could push the “pause” button and talk to her when things began frustrating him. That way, she could help him with his frustration in its early stages, instead of hearing about it when he was boiling over with emotions.
Another mother drew upon a biblical proverb —a type of word picture —to talk with her very unmotivated child. The proverb says, “Go to the ant, O sluggard, observe her ways.”[78]
After a good deal of thought, this wise woman made her son do just that. She bought him an ant farm and got him excited about capturing, feeding, and watching the nonstop activity of a colony. Every day, her son observed how the ants all worked together and stayed at a task. In so doing, he saw living examples of character traits his mother wanted to build into his life.
In an appropriate time and way, she used a word picture with him. She talked about how he could be a better “ant” with his household chores and schoolwork, and how what he did or didn’t do around the house affected everyone else. To her immense surprise, he began making tangible changes in his behavior.
In these homes and hundreds of others, the parents have used word pictures to bring lessons to life for their youngsters. They know that when a child has a picture of a desired behavior —instead of just words —he learns a lesson faster and remembers it longer than he would if they had given the most inspired lecture possible.[79]
Mastering word pictures with young children is crucial. That’s because their little minds are still in the “input” stage where they’re most open to change through instruction. But soon, with the onset of puberty, a youngster will move to the I’ve-already-got-the-answers stage. Adolescence requires a different approach to accomplish change.
Using Word Pictures with Adolescents
Teenagers usually go through an “individuality crisis” just about the time their parents go through the midlife “identity crisis.” What’s the result of this emotional mismatch? As a man once said, “What we have here is a failure to communicate!”
If the goal of parents with young children is character building through instruction, their goal with adolescents is building through friendship.
Discipline takes on new meaning when you’re looking up at your son instead of down at him. And when your daughter’s friends all drive cars, it’s hard to keep her around the house long enough to hear your hour-long speeches. By a child’s teen years, parents often reap the results of the character instruction —both good and bad —they sowed earlier. But if that’s the case, how do you change a teenager’s behavior? Again, word pictures hold a powerful key.
Researchers point out that for adults (teens are adults in their thinking process, if not always in their judgment), the best way to change someone is through a significant emotional event.[80] Think about this for a moment.
When are adults most teachable? When a significant event affects an important relationship.
We’ve seen a husband who wouldn’t crack a marriage enrichment book devour dozens of them when his wife walked out.
We’ve seen a woman who never wrote a letter home suddenly write nonstop notes after receiving the news her mother was dying.
And we’ve seen teenagers listen to words of praise, instruction, and correction with the greatest effect when they were expressed by a parent who is also their friend. It’s a wise father or mother who doesn’t rely only on grounding or grabbing away car keys, but who can grab a child’s emotions in a heart-to-heart conversation.
If you’re like many parents and have declared war on your teenager, we can assure you there will be no winners —only prisoners. And if a teenager is a captive in her own home, watch out when she breaks the chains and goes off to college or work.
If you’re more interested in your son’s behavior than his character, he’ll pick up the inconsistency. If your daughter senses you’re more concerned that she doesn’t embarrass you than that she does what’s best for her, you’ll get resistance. And if you don’t know what it takes to develop a meaningful friendship with your child, your first priority should be to get the necessary knowledge and skills.[81]
You can force a two-year-old to sit down on the outside . . . even if he or she is standing up on the inside! But you can’t force-feed words and ideas down teenagers’ throats and expect them not to react and regurgitate those words later.
In a home where a parent and child can’t be friends, teens will listen to their peer group instead of you. If you want to be the one who has your son’s or daughter’s ear, try learning their language. Try speaking the language of love. The music they listen to does. Their peers do. Even the Bible they read does. If you want to make inroads of friendship with your child, then you will too.
For example, we know one family in which the three teenage kids hated having Mom and Dad waving and trying to get their attention at events. So they came up with a “secret” way of connecting. Actually, millions of people who have seen the Oscar-winning movie The Sting knew about it, but here’s how this family used it in a fun way to “touch” each other while out in public.
In the movie, a group of con men are planning a “score” against a bad guy who killed one of their friends. To make it work, while in public they have to pretend they don’t know each other. Yet they need a way to communicate in those situations. So they devise a method to connect without anyone else’s knowing they’re making contact.
For example, when one of them met another at the train station, they didn’t wave or even nod. The one man just put his right index finger up to the side of his nose and brushed it as if it itched. The other man, seeing the gesture, responded in kind. Connection made, and no one else in the station the wiser.
After seeing the movie, this family with three teenagers decided they would use the same method. When their son was at his band concert, instead of waving like crazy and embarrassing him, Mom and Dad would just touch the side of their nose. And he would do the same in reply. Connection made, and no one around them knew anything about it.
It started as something funny, but it became a family tradition. At airports, at graduations, in meeting at the mall, even at weddings, it was soon their fun way to “touch” the other person. With this simple “word picture,” they said to each other, “We’re here. We’re proud of you. We love you.” And it has now carried on to the next generation.
Whether we have young children in the instructional stage or teens in the friendship-building years, word pictures help us as parents. A brief look at the remaining two reflections from the pillars of marriage can help as well.
3. Children Need the Love That Meaningful Touch Can Bring.
In the chapter on building an intimate marriage, we noted that meaningful touch can greatly improve any relationship. In a very real sense, it leaves a word picture of commitment and caring in another person’s mind. But is this also true with children?
We recently heard from a young single-parent mother who had read one of our parenting books. In one of the chapters, we stress the symbolic picture that touch gives a child, and it convicted her right down to her socks.
This young woman, whom we’ll call Julie, got pregnant at 16. Believing life was sacred, she opted to carry her baby to term and not abort him. She had initially decided on adoption, but at the last minute she decided to keep her newborn son, Jason.
After the excitement of having a newborn wore off, problems began to develop. As the baby grew older, so did her resentment of him. Instead of a joy, he became a burden. Instead of an object to love, he became a symbol of her frustration with life.
But she began to head down a different path when she started going to a church near her small apartment. Members took her under their wing and helped her in every way. Yet she still felt deep resentment toward Jason that she couldn’t seem to shake. That emotion manifested itself in one particular way —she didn’t want to touch him.
Touch is the first way babies know they’re loved. Long before they can understand words, they clearly read the nonverbal language of love, expressed through meaningful touch. But that was missing from the pages of Jason’s little life.
What changed Julie? What made her open to going against her feelings and reaching out for her son?
As he grew older, she began noticing problems in his life that she couldn’t ignore. After reading in our book The Blessing about the incredible power of meaningful touch, she talked with a group of close friends about the repulsion she felt toward her son. Wisely, they encouraged her to talk further with a counselor.
Within a few sessions, Julie was confronted with many reasons why she withheld meaningful touch: guilt from the past; a lack of touch in her own home; the fact that Jason looked very much like his father —the man who had gotten her pregnant and then laughed at her plans to keep the baby.
Finally, she decided to give her son a picture of the love she had for him —through physical touch. But her first attempts didn’t go quite as she’d expected. When she reached out to hug him, he ran away! She’d only touched him before when she was angry. So, when she put her arms around him he fled, crying in confusion and fear.
However, after several weeks, Julie’s determination to offer this powerful picture of love won out. And the transformation in Jason’s attitude and actions was dramatic. Not only did her son become more sociable and less anxious around others, but his schoolwork and attention span in class also improved. All because she began giving him a powerful, nonverbal word picture of her love for him.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how high would your children rate you for appropriately touching them in meaningful ways? Have you asked them lately? Have you ever asked your spouse that question?
Even teenagers who cringe when their mom or dad hugs them (“Oh, Mom, stop that! One of my friends might see you!”) still need that picture of love. You may have to get a little creative. (Try wrestling on the carpet!) But you build love and value in a child when you’re not afraid or don’t neglect to touch your children in appropriate meaningful ways.
4. Children Need Times of Emotional Bonding.
We realize that “romantic/emotionally bonding” times that are so important in a marriage have definite limits with a child. However, if you drop the word romantic, you should have all the emotional bonding you can with your son or daughter.
One way we’ve chosen to bond with our families is by going camping. It’s not the act of camping that provides closeness, but what happens when we camp with our kids. You guessed it: catastrophes!
For some reason, the memories of a camping trip —where you forgot all the food but the marshmallows; where the tent collapsed for no reason —twice; where you had a blowout on the way up and a blow-up on the way back home —all can become great bonding experiences.
Another thing I (John) have done since our girls were young was to plan intentional daddy-daughter dates. With two very different daughters, this looked very different with each girl. Kari loved to go out to eat and talk with me the entire meal. Laura wanted to go play soccer, or go for a walk and get some ice cream. Even driving became an intentional time of emotional bonding (there are not a lot of easy ways for teenagers to avoid you when you’re in a car). For both girls, when they were young and I took them to school, and while they had their learners’ permits, we would play 20 questions and sometimes take the long way home to allow more time to talk if there was something going on in their lives.
Even as our girls continued to grow up, Cindy and I used something as simple as apples and peanut butter to stay connected. Both of our girls were athletes in high school. Kari, the older, was a varsity cheerleader and captain of her state-winning team. She also ran track. Laura played volleyball, basketball, tennis, soccer, and probably three other sports I’m forgetting to mention. Needless to say, there were a lot of games and a lot of late nights.
But no matter how late the game went, when the girls got home (the team always had to stay longer than the parents), we would be up waiting for them with apples and peanut butter. We did this after school dances, after college finals, and still do when they come home to visit. Our girls knew that no matter what, when they got home, we would be there with apples and peanut butter to talk about whatever happened that day. Sure we lost some sleep, but the conversations that happened over apples and peanut butter were life changing to our girls and to our family.
There are literally endless ways you can bond with your kids. You’ll never forget the time you went out for ice cream and had your little one’s cone drop on his shoe! And how can you forget the time you took the older one surfing for the first time and then paid for the stitches when the board sliced open his chin? Such experiences bond us together (after the stitches have healed, of course) and travel right to a child’s heart.