As parents we can try to pass on ideas or given instructions that we don’t completely understand ourselves. When we try to pass an unclear thought to our children and they don’t get it, then we can get frustrated with them. Really though our frustration isn’t with them, it is with our inability to understand and explain.
I’ve experienced this with my children. I think I have gotten a wonderful revelation, yet when I start to share it, it doesn’t make sense. Instead of admitting I need to think it through more thoroughly, I talk more. As I talk more my emotions get desperate to find that word or phrase or analogy that will clarify what I am saying. The whole experience is like a dust storm, everyone feels windblown and in a fog. Once the dust settles, there seems to be more work to be done than before the storm blew through.
At other times, I have given a child a flippant instruction to go do something and when they question me I react because I haven’t thought it all the way through and they are causing me to realize I wasn’t clear. Instead of calmly talking it through I might raise my voice and declare, “Just do what I said”. Very helpful.
I can fall into this mist with character training too. When a situation stumps me I can start to ramble, you might call it thinking out loud, but to a child it is rambling. Instead of stepping back and saying I will get back to them about that, I stir up a thick fog that provides no training and a sense of blindness.
So Mom, when you feel yourself working yourself up into a doosey of a dust storm, stop yourself before any destruction is done. “When words are many sin is not absent.” Proverbs 10: 19 Admit you need to think this idea through more. Seek clarity before burying your child in confusion and guilt.