Are you ready to make some small (but enormously impactful) changes?

Friends, I have a challenge for each of us.  Let’s make 2015 our best family year ever! At Family Talk, we genuinely want you to enjoy being a parent and feel encouraged in your journey to be kinder, more deliberate and more confident in your parenting. Most of all, we want you become the parent that God wants you to be. And we’re here to help.

This year, I want to challenge you that whether you are a mother father, stepparent or grandparent, to make some small changes in your interactions with the children you love, so that you will bring them closer to you. The greatest improvements in our relationships usually come from the small or hard shifts that we make in our attitude, tone of voice or even our mannerisms. Because we can’t always see what we need to improve, we need a little help from friends on the outside. That’s why we are here; to be your advocates and your encouragers.

Over the next few months, I want to give you some simple suggestions that will result in big shifts in your relationships. First, let’s start with how we talk to our families.

I don’t know about you, but I’d like to speak better to my loved ones. I get frustrated that I use kind words and a calm tone on coworkers and patients but when I come home, I get short with my husband. If my kids were here, I’m sure they would get an earful of snarky comments, too.  I want to change this and I’ll bet you might need some help, too.

James, Jesus’ brother, has sobering words for us about our tongues. He wrote, “Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect and able to keep their whole body in check.” That means that this long skinny muscle in the middle of our mouths can dictate what our whole body does. Now that’s extraordinary power. He goes on to liken us to horses that can be controlled with bits in our mouths. If we, as James says, work on getting control of what, how and when we speak to our loved ones, could it be that our relationships with them would completely change? I think so.

From a child’s perspective, what he hears his parents say about him changes the way he sees himself. If a father is critical, the son will feel badly about himself for years. If his mother praises a son for being kind and patient he will see himself as kind and patient. A child’s identity is largely shaped by what his parents communicate to him through their words. Think of how we parents impact our children’s self worth, self-confidence and happiness in life by the words that we use.

Here’s what I will work on this year and I encourage you to join me. First, I will aspire to check my tone of voice when I speak, and work to use a tone that will lift a loved one up, not tear them down. Second, I will think before I say something and work harder on speaking less and listening more. The older I get, the more I realize the wisdom in listening rather than in speaking. Third, I will practice paying a compliment to my husband every day, especially when I don’t feel like it.

I encourage you to pick three things that you want to change in your speech. Are you a yeller? Stop yelling. Do you complain incessantly to those around you? Stop complaining. Maybe you are nice when you speak to loved ones but you have a hard time always being honest. Resolve to tell the truth and stop telling ‘white lies.’ When you examine how you communicate to others, be brutally honest with yourself. Ask yourself what you sound like to others and if you aren’t sure, ask them. I promise, they’ll tell you. You may use my ideas or come up with your own. But I guarantee one thing. If we are successful at these, within one month’s time, we will have different relationships with our loved ones. James is right.  If we can begin to get control of how we speak, then we gain control of our whole bodies and we change the lives of those we love along the way.