Games People Play

"Oh the things people say, Lord!
Every night and every day, Lord!
Never meaning what they say, Lord!
Never saying what they mean. "

Great bit of lyrics that! Sunday, Pastor Gregg reminded the children (and all the adults, don't tell anyone the children sermon is good for them too, shhhh!) that words are hurtful.  Even though we teach them things like;"Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me."  Words can hurt.  Words can make things worse.   We teach them to say a lot of things that aren't really true. We teach them to say things like; "every time you point a finger at me you have 4 pointing back at you,"  and "it takes one to know one."    Giving them something to say instead of feeling defeated when someone calls them a name helps, sort of. We call it externalizing defenses.  It would be better if we lived in a world where we didn't have to learn to externalize defenses.  It is part of growing up.

It's true that we need to teach them not to point.  We also need to teach them not to call names.  Lets face it, sometimes the world is not nice place for children. So we try to make the world a better place. We teach social skills to help our kids handle these difficulties. We try to teach them to distract the friend that is being mean, into going and playing a game.  That's hard to do.  If someone is mean to you, do you feel like inviting them to go do something...together? It sounds like this; "I don't feel like arguing, that's boring...do you want to go play 4 square?" Sounds crazy but it usually works.  We even teach them that the mean kid calling them names is to be called "friend?" Yep, we really do! Mostly, we teach kids that words can defuse situations and make friends out of enemies.

 It is the right thing to do!