As my wife and I are speaking to our children about taming the tongue, and as I Tweeted/Facebook Statused several Scriptures regarding the topic, here are a few thoughts on the topic. Please "Comment" if you have thoughts:
- I believe the chances of children taming their tongues increase with the efforts of parents to tame their tongue. See book suggestion on my blog page that I've purchased to try to help me tame the tongue.
- Though our parenting efforts are most always aimed at shepherding our children's hearts, I believe taming the tongue is a pretty important behavioral issue & attempt to nip bad practices swiftly and fully.
- I've observed, there are many poor models of adults who have never tamed their tongues. Our children are watching. Therefore, I believe it's fairly important to choose your friendships wisely.
- I've also found it very effective, upon encountering other children speaking in a manner we don't find acceptable in our home, to pull our children off to the side immediately to debrief what occurred and to help them understand that imitating their peers will not yield good results.
- Writing counts as a voice, and we monitor notes our children write to us and to one another. I try not to allow the kids to "bottle up" their feelings to long. If the kids are having bad thoughts or attitudes, I want to teach them to process those, pray them through and to produce words - even "hard words" in as creative and positive a tone as possible. I want the kids to know they can speak hard words - the truth in love - and still tame their tongues at the same time.
I still feel I'm learning a lot about the topic of taming the tongue. I enjoy learning, and believe it's an important part of my journey as a disciple.
What comes to mind when you think of the topic, #TameTheTongue?
