Page 14 - Publishing Inspiration Christmas Card 2022

Careful of Wording
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My three-year-old daughter brought me her toy. “Daddy, you
fix for me?” It was a little wooden duck and just needed a little glue.
I got some glue, put it on the broken joint, and pushed the two pieces
together. I must have put on too much glue because some dripped
down my hand. My little daughter stood close by, watching me. I
wanted to hold it steady while the glue was setting, so I turned to her.
“Sweetheart, could you go ask Mommy for a damp cloth for
me?”
“A what?” she asked.
“A damp cloth.”
She hurried off to her mother, who was in the kitchen. It
wasn’t long before I heard my wife exclaim in dismay. “Your father
asked you to get what?”
Suddenly, I realized how what I said might come out of the
mouth of a three-year-old.
“I said damp-p-p-p-p cloth!” I called out. “There was a p on
the end of that.”
I’ve learned that a person must be careful what they say to a
child. Even if the child says it right, it often sounds different coming
from them.
A good example of this was the first time we took our
youngest children to the ocean. Our older ones had been there before
when we visited their grandparents in California. As we prepared for
another trip down there, the older children told the little ones about
their first visit to the ocean. They talked about picking up shells,
wading in the waves, and feeling the sand between their toes. They
had the little ones so excited that’s all they could talk about.
We had a pleasant visit with their grandparents, but all the
smaller children could think about was getting to the ocean. My son,
Scott, was especially excited. He kept asking, “So, when are we
going to the beach?”
The day finally arrived. As we drove through the city traffic,
my oldest daughter got them more excited.
“And there’s water as far as you can see. And when the sun
sets, it’s like a whole trail of diamonds.”

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