Everyone talks about how important it is to teach your children right and wrong, to be polite, to encourage others and be supportive.  But not many people talk about how we can learn from our own kids.  Sometimes the most innocent of comments will strike a chord and really make you think twice about your actions.

I am not the most confident of people and have often been called a pessimist.  I have to admit that I often assume the worst in most situations.  I figure that if the worst happens, well then I’ll be prepared and not taken off guard.  This way of thinking has served me pretty well over the years.  I have had a very lucky and sweet life that, so far, has been without tragedy (knocking on wood right now…).

I am also not a person who likes to talk about myself.  But I will usually ask a multitude of questions of others.  I find conversations much easier this way, particularly with new people.  I am pretty self deprecating and don’t take kindly to compliments.  Preferring to shift the attention to someone else.

Recently, while out with some friends and my teenage daughter, the conversation turned to my house and its style.  Rather than accepting the generous compliment of how we’ve decorated, I explained how I thought it was so outdated and badly needed to be refreshed.  My daughter immediately got visibly upset about how I “am always so negative about everything and how mad it made her”.  This went on for a few minutes, with some tears and some flailing arms.  At this point we made a hasty exit.  The “visibly upset” take of my daughter turned into an outright tantrum that ended with her usual “you just don’t understand how I feel about it” comment.  You might think that this whole thing made me mad and that we had stormed home.  Not quite.

We did drove home in silence but I spent the time thinking about how right she was.  It occurred to me that simple comments I make to others, that to me are either a joke or an attempt to shift attention away from me, can be really upsetting to my own flesh and blood.  After all, talking about what a loser I am, how much weight I have to lose and how our house is really not very cool, certainly wouldn’t make anyone feel very good about hanging out with me.  Certainly not being related to me.  I thought about how I am so often on my soapbox about how we should empower our kids, especially girls.  How we need to make them confident about themselves.  I am a huge proponent of raising strong girls who believe that they are beautiful, smart and have enormous potential in the world.  So, seriously, what kind of example am I setting by downing myself and my home.  Why have I not thought of this before.

So, I went to my daughter and told her she was absolutely right about everything she said.  I apologized for the whole discussion and promised to think about what I said before I spoke.

This whole situation really impacted me and reminded me about how much power our words have over our children.  They see and hear EVERYTHING we do.  Make no mistake – they are listening.  And if we are not careful we can really mold them to become just like us.  Some of that is probably great, but some?  Not so much.

Parenting is such a goddamn hard job.  It requires so much thinking and rethinking.  Advising.  Modeling.  Watching.  Besides all the love we give them, it is important to remember that they will likely be a reflection of what we present to them.  If I want a confident daughter I’d better start acting like one myself.