Blog 3543 – 07.17.2025
“Use Your Words”
Today’s title is an expression that parents especially mothers, like to use with their little ones to get them to let us know what they are thinking. Initially communication with babies seems so one sided and we wonder how much they understand of our words and they communicate with us mainly through cries that signal some distress and we can only guess what it might be – hungry, wet or worse, and so we go through the check list ticking off the easy ones first hoping that their aloud annoying alarm does not signal some life threatening condition. Those cries are designed to get our undivided attention.
And then comes that first word “mama”, “daddy”, or more likely “no” as it is the word babies hear most often. Still we are thrilled to hear more than just a cry for help. Then the little memorized phrases come and we wonder if our children are just little parrots repeating back what they have heard and so we watch their little faces even more closely hoping to see that little light of cognition, true understanding. We have wondered since they first arrived just what they were thinking and now the dam has finally broken and a flood of consciousness, continuous and unfiltered, fills their every waking hour. Taxing though that may sometimes seem, still we listen hoping to learn all their secrets and share a few of our own as well.
And then they get quiet and we discover that quiet scares us even more than their car alarm loud cries once did. It is said that “nature abhors a vacuum” and that empty spaces always get filled. Quiet is not a natural state for small children especially if the are awake and so we begin to worry that something is wrong and we implore them to “use your words.”
We miss those little chatter boxes with their myriad of “Why, mommy?” and “Why, daddy?” – questions that we once hoped we could answer. The harsh reality is that we do not know all the answers, indeed we do not even know all the questions.
As parents we start out thinking that we have so much to teach our children, yet if we are paying attention, truly listening, even before their first complete sentence we know that the opposite is more true, that children are here to teach us and not the other way around.
I have learned so very much from my children, my daughter and my son. I hope I get to stick around a while longer so that my granddaughter Emma Grace, who will be two years old in two weeks and five days, can continue my education. I have so much yet to learn. Don’t we all?
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David James White
Its only words ~ Bee Gees ~ Lyrics
theencouragingword 