She calls me “My Sweetie.”
Sometimes it’s “Baby.”
Her chubby hand and dimpled knuckles pat my arm.
I have loved being a grandmother to Mavis from the very first second I saw her red-faced in the delivery room, just like I knew I would, but I’m absolutely obsessed with the two-year-old version of her.
She has a bigger vocabulary than most two-year-olds.
We always smile when the doctor asks us to count the number of words she can say, because it’s nearly impossible.
Just yesterday, when asked if she would rather have ice cream or a ride on a coin-operated machine, she chose the ice cream by saying, “I like that option better.”
My daughter, Alena always sends me messages regarding her,
and yesterday she told me something that made me pause and smile, because I realized it was proof of something so powerful:
She said that when Mavis was eating her dinner, she struggled to get noodles to stay on her fork, and rather than get frustrated, Alena heard her mumble to herself,
“You can do dis, My Sweetheart.”
Reading those words in a text message made me smile, and feel a little choked up, actually, because I realized the words we have used with her have become her own inner voice.
She now tells herself she can, she will, she is strong and capable, so beautiful.
She calls herself, “Sweetheart,” because that is what we have called her.
We have trained her that when we ask, “How much does Grammy or Auntie love you?”
“You tell me EVERY DAY,” is the proper answer.
I’ve heard it said before that the words you use with your children become their own inner voice, and I was so delighted to see the proof of this in my current most precious little girl.
I know that the voices my parents spoke of my own capability, and things they trusted me to figure out on my own helped shape me into a person who believes in myself, and is not easily intimidated.
I’ve seen the flipside in my father and my husband, however, of what happens to children when they are spoken to harshly, and how it is something that is not easily undone.
But, if Mavis spills milk, it is, “Accidents happen.”
If she struggles to do something, it is, “You can do hard things! Keep trying!”
If it’s frustration she feels, it is, “Let’s take a deep breath, and then it’ll be easier to tell me what is frustrating you.”
Our words are shaping a lifetime of her inner-response.
I think back on things said to my father by his mother, and the times he, then, struggled to make a different choice when raising me.
Rather than letting his words fly and cut me, he learned to be quiet even when he was angry.
It took until adulthood to see that his silence was sometimes his version of my protection:
A cycle that he had broken.
I then took what was given to me and shaped it into even more with my own girls.
I raised them to express what they feel freely.
I raised them to be able to say what they needed, even if sometimes their personal needs felt like they hurt.
And now, I am seeing that what has been passed to my granddaughter is a lineage of hands that became more and more gentle down through generations, and mouths that were only loving with their words.
She has never been insulted, yelled at, or demeaned.
She calls herself “Sweetheart,” and I think that took generations.
We worked to change the patterns.
Her hand only knows the soft, loving patting, and that Grammies are for cuddling against, and she knows she is a treasure.
We can shape entire identities with our words.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
