A rude
word out of a baby’s mouth isn’t something extraordinary nowadays. A
four-year-old toddler can sometimes say a foul word that a drunken sailor would
be ashamed of. “Where do they learn all those words?” the embarrassed parents
gasp in bewilderment. “We never say words like these at home.” If you really
never say “words like these”, hopefully we will be able to correct this
situation.
Even if
you don’t use foul language, your neighbors and their children, as well as
other children in the kindergarten and at school, along with some of your
guests, passers-by, and characters from YouTube videos that you let your
children binge watch to get them occupied with anything, do. You say you avoid
all those things? Great but the issue with worldly influences remains. You
can’t shield your child from all dangers and evils of this world, for then must
ye needs go out of the world. (1 Cor. 5:10).
What
shall we do? You’ve got to teach your children to tell good from evil, useful
from harmful, holy from sinful. You’ve got to teach your children to be
thoughtful and responsible. You’ve got to teach them not just to avoid bad
language but also regard the gift of speech as a God’s gift in general. You’ve
got to teach them to use their tongues in moderation and in a clever manner.
It’s high time that they learned it!
Having
assigned themselves this lofty task and hasty to see the results, parents can
start beating their children up and doing other unseemly things—and to no
avail, in my opinion. Your child will not appreciate your deeply held righteous
motives; she will resent you and feel the urge to do the opposite of what
you’re trying to teach her.
Another
extreme way to achieve your goal is making your child listen to your abstract
and lengthy moralising. A child usually finds an abstract thought hard to
memorize. Her world is filled with objects and feelings, not concepts. Children
like to touch, smell, taste, or disassemble things. They can’t live without
interaction and contact with the environment. A smack on the head is wrong;
abstract moralising is wrong, too. You have to find the perfect balance.
When I
happened to utter a foul word in my mother’s presence (I had heard it from my
friends), she sent me to wash my mouth with soap. I was rubbing my lips and
tongue with the bitter detergent and thinking that words can be dirty, too. Old
school, huh? I don’t think anyone uses this method any longer nowadays but it
made a huge impression on me and I didn’t feel offended or humiliated.
However,
we should look for other ways of explaining this point. I’ve found one such
way, not far from the soap: toothpaste. Dear readers, here is a sketch of a
class on The Gift of Human Speech, for children aged (approximately) 6-9.
You will
need several toothpaste tubes. Find an appropriate moment and be serious and
focused: yours is an important mission.
Lesson 1. Recklessness
Give one
tube to your child and invite him or her to squeeze all toothpaste onto a
plate. “Dreams come true,” he or she will think and start doing it vigorously.
When the child hands you the empty tube, smile and ask him or her to… put the
toothpaste back into the tube.
Naturally,
toothpaste won’t get back into the tube. That is when you will rightfully
conclude that “a word is like toothpaste: once out, you won’t bring it back
in.” An empty tube looks ugly; people throw it into a trash can. A verbose
person is often considered empty and unworthy of paying attention to.
One more
thing. If anything goes wrong, children sometimes say the magic phrase, “I take
my words back.” The example of the squeezed toothpaste teaches them that what
they do is hide the plate behind their back and pretend that the toothpaste
isn’t there but it is a lie. As soon as the word enters the world, it begins to
act, healing or crippling, building or destroying. You’ve got to bear
responsibility for every word.
Lesson 2. Talking Too Much
Take
another tube and another plate, this time with patterns or a drawing. Invite
your child to repeat the contours on the plate with toothpaste. Encourage your
child to imagine that she is a maverick artist who always wants to try
something new. Praise her for her effort and say that it’s one thing to squeeze
everything at once and the other thing to squeeze the toothpaste bit by bit and
only where needed. It’s more difficult but the difference between a shapeless
mass and a masterpiece is evident. Talking only as much as necessary is a great
achievement that pleases our Heavenly Father.
Lesson 3. Slander and Flattery
If your
son or daughter has already been to summer camps and seen the practice of
smearing a sleeping person with toothpaste, typical of those places, you can
give them this example to teach them about words that people can use to
besmirch a person: to libel a righteous person or to justify a bad person.
Applying toothpaste to your summer camp friend’s face isn’t the proper way of
using this substance. The Lord gave us the gift of speech not for slander or
flattery.
Lesson 4. Switcheroo
Finally,
it’s time for the last tube, which is a special one. It appears to be the same
as the other three, but this isn’t the case. You had previously replaced the
toothpaste with shoe polish and made it look like toothpaste. Ask your child to
apply this paste on a new toothbrush. Imagine how surprised she will be when a
strange-smelling black substance will go out of the tube instead of the
colorful and fragrant white toothpaste. Ask her if she likes it. Build your
discussion in such a way as to make your child understand that foul language
does not correspond to our calling. God wants to hear certain kinds of words
from us but sometimes hears different words. The toothbrush is spoiled by the
shoe polish, and we’ll have to throw it away. Isn’t it a symbol that shows how
destructive swearing is?
I believe
that’s all with regard to toothpaste. I’m sure, though, that there are some
other funny ways to help children make sense of our complicated life. You can
correct most of the character flaws of your child, hopefully—but only if you,
dear readers, serve as a good example for your children and don’t use foul
language.
By Fr. Leonid Kudryachov
Translated
by The Catalog of Good Deeds
CONVERSATION