“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Of all the schoolyard lies I heard while growing up, this one about hurled objects and hurled words may have been the biggest. That’s because, as I’ve learned since moving on from South River School in Marshfield, Mass., words have the potential to inflict immense damage.
How many real-life, actual bloody wars have begun with a war of words? How many family rifts can be traced to something spoken rashly, and wrongly? Granted, actions do speak louder than words. And actions obviously play a major role in history, both globally and in our own minuscule corners of the world.
But before becoming a father, I had learned enough about words to respect the power they wielded—for good or for ill—when they flowed from my lips to my children’s ears.
So does this make me a superstar in this category? Not by a long shot. More than anything else, this make me acutely aware of how often, and how badly, I fall short of the mark in this area. Just ask any neighbors who have heard me try to shepherd Zach and Maggie Rose up and down three flights of stairs.
We don’t have space for all the ways I screw up. Instead, let’s dwell on one word that I have succeeded in never speaking over Maggie Rose and Zachary: shy.
Though it’s only three letters long, I consider it a dishonorable member of the Four-Letter Word Club.
Now this may strike you as a tad strong. You may wonder what’s wrong with saying, “He’s a little shy today” or “What a cutie. She’s a shy girl around strangers”?
But when I hear other parents label their children in this way, I cringe. They mean well, and I suspect they believe they are simply speaking a harmless truth. But they’d never think of substituting “stupid” or “ugly” in the above phrases. Well, I put “shy” in the same harsh ballpark.
Words are seeds, and when repeated enough times—sometimes even once could do the trick—they have this way of taking root and setting up residence for life in an individual’s view of himself or herself. And think about it: in what area of life is it an advantage to be shy?
Fittingly, the Wikipedia definition of shyness includes this excerpt about children : “Shyness may fade with time (a child who is shy toward strangers, for instance, may eventually lose this trait when older and more socially adept)…”
(The full Wikipedia entry can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shyness.)
So next time you hear the “s” word, whether you’re the “stranger” or the parent or whatever your role may be, I urge you to respectfully disagree.
Any time someone has inadvertently hit this hot button of mine, my reply is along these lines, “Actually, s/he’s very outgoing. S/he’s just being reserved at the moment.” Then, with God’s grace, I leave out the expletive that’s just waiting to spring forth from my mouth.
I showed considerably less poise at least once, about six months ago, when Aunt Carol was visiting from Evanston. She referred to one of the kids as shy and I tersely snapped, “That’s a four-letter word in our household. Zach and Maggie Rose are not shy.”
Good thing I didn’t have any sticks or stones on me, or I may have hurt Carol.