Think Before You Speak

Today I was thinking about how difficult it is to be a kid - a kid of any age really.  Young, teenager, it doesn't matter.  Now, I know people may think "Wait.  Why is it hard to be a kid?  They have no responsibility.  They have someone to take care of them.  They have a home.  They don't have to work.  They just have to go to school and come home."  But no.  It's much more than that.

A few weeks ago, I was shopping at a local shopping center (not to name any names, but it rhymes with Schmall Schmart) and standing in front of me in line was a woman with a small child, probably around three years old.  The child -- not the woman.  The child dropped something and when trying to pick it up, she knocked over some other stuff.  I expected the woman to maybe scold her or tell her to be careful, but I was not expecting what actually happened.  She told the child that she was a failure at life.  A failure.  At life. Ummm...what?  No.  The poor child hasn't even begun to live her life, so how can she be a failure?  

Now I know that people have bad days.  And I am not saying that this woman was a terrible parent/aunt/babysitter/older sister/friend/whatever she was to the child.  Sometimes we say things we do not mean.  But maybe we should try and make a point and think about it before we speak.  Especially to a young child.  What if this is not the only time this child hears things like that?  What if that little girl at the age of three or four really does already think she is a failure at life?  What if other small children across the world think that?  You know they do.  Thinking about that today made me think of two likely scenarios that could play out in a child's life if that child is constantly told things like "you are a failure" or "you are stupid" or "you are not good enough" and other confidence destroyers.  One is that the child believes it is okay to say such things to people and becomes a bully to others in the way that he or she was "bullied" by words.  The other is that the child becomes a target of bullying.  Nobody here lives under a rock.  We all know what happens in schools in either situation.  Someone ends up getting physically hurt or ends up dead.  School violence, school shootings, suicides, they all start with some sort of bullying or emotional issues.  I have no psychological evidence of this, I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist -- I just use my common sense and what we hear in the news lately to come up with this idea.  

Agree or disagree.  Either way, it can't hurt to think before we speak, right?